My high school had a guidance counselor, tasked (among other duties) with advising seniors about college. Most of my fellow students who went to college attended Akron University (as it was then known) or Kent State University. Both were inexpensive, with an option to live at home and save even more money.
But Mrs. Keller had no need to advise me and was smart enough not to try. I had made up my stubborn mind, and nothing would change it. I chose my college for the best of reasons: people smiled at me as my youth group toured the campus. (They don’t now, of course; they’re staring at their phones. Enrollment remains high anyway.) Our pastor had an unmarried sister who taught Christian Education at this college, some 300 miles from our city. To visit her and do any handyman work that needed cared for, he took us to visit the college, where two young people from our church had already gone. We trailed our tour guide, Gail, she of the long, swinging straight blonde hair, looking at the few buildings, two of them built the previous century, when the school had been under the auspices of the Presbyterian church. (The Baptists bought the place in the early 1950s, looking for a new home for a Bible college then in Cleveland.) I loved the trees that formed a canopy over Main Street, in a village of only a few thousand people. Green and leafy overhead, with brick streets, a women’s dorm named Faith, a sense of peace—why wouldn’t I choose that place? I didn’t care about academic credentials or what doors a degree from a small Christian college—with fewer students than my high school had—might open. When I announced my decision to my parents, my mother said, “I think we can afford one year.” And with all the self-absorption of an adolescent, I replied, “Well, I’m going for four years.” I had no thought of what the cost—one year at my chosen school equaled roughly four years at Akron U or Kent State—would mean for my parents or my younger brother. I was going to the college where I believed God had called me, and, as a future missionary, I was going to major in Bible.
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Baptist GirlI was a conservative Baptist girl who grew up to become a career Christian, working first in a Baptist school and then in a Baptist college. For about three decades, it was very good until it wasn’t, and I had to leave. But the Baptists formed me. This is my homage to the good times and good people of the world I left, finally, at forty-three, when I became an Episcopalian. These are my memories; others might disagree with my recollections. So be it. Archives
January 2024
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