From grades four to six, we were under the tutelage of Aunt Betty during the church’s 11:00 A.M. service, held upstairs. She was in fact the biological aunt of many of the kids, the church being populated with several families originally from Hungary. She was graying, a woman who loved to wear purple. Although she couldn’t carry a tune, she gamely led us in song. She and Uncle Andy had no children, but they were endlessly kind to the children of that church. Standing in the back of the sanctuary after church, Uncle Andy could be relied on to have hard candy in his pockets. And he and Aunt Betty occasionally took three of us favored girls out for Sunday lunch.
Aunt Betty was a consummate teacher. Professionally, she taught third grade, and much of her presentation seemed aimed at that age. She called us her preciouses, with no irony or thought of Tolkein’s Gollum, featured in a novel I hadn’t yet read. We sat in rows of folding chairs divided into two sections and separated by a center aisle, which made it easy for the kid ushers to take an offering. This was Junior Church, after all, so there was an offering, a few coins from our allowances. There was a very mild altar call at the end of the lesson for any who wanted to know Jesus as their personal Savior. (One Sunday, I did, and she “led me to Christ” as we termed it.) She must have taught us several things, but one series sticks in my mind. The Gospel of John is the most mystical, least action-oriented of the four gospels. Jesus works miracles, some of them not in the other gospels; he also gives lengthy discourses, some of which make little sense on first reading. Why it should be the favored Gospel of my youth I do not know, but I loved it. Even at that age, I was writing and wanted to be a writer. A book that began with “In the beginning was the Word” got my full attention. Beyond that, I was caught by the weekly lesson, presented in flannelgraph. Teachers went to a church supply store and bought a book of biblical figures, like paper dolls, but with a felt backing, for the stories they were going to teach. They also bought large pieces of white flannel that they colored or painted to make the appropriate background. Then then hung the finished product over a board propped on an easel. If multiple backgrounds were needed, they were layered on the board, the correct background to be flipped up as the story progressed. What I remember is a pastoral setting—green grass, rolling hills, blue sky—ready for the Lamb of God to march onto the scene and to be so heralded by John the Baptist. We progressed, slowly, through the book of John. Each week we were to memorize a Bible verse from the story, a memory aid given to us at the end of the lesson. These, too, seemed wondrous to me, the words from the King James Version printed on construction paper of the appropriate color and shape. So, for the miracle of turning water into grape juice (Jesus did not approve of alcohol), there was a small purple bunch of grapes, with Mary’s words from chapter 2 written on it: Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it. And a yellow ear of corn proclaimed these words from one of the discourses--Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone, but if it dies, it bringeth forth much fruit. By sixth grade, we were deemed ready to practice going to Big Church once a month. This was done so that when we attended regularly (the programs for teens happened on Sunday evenings), we would know how to behave. I might have been apprehensive—my parents did not attend church, so I had no family with whom to sit. By the grace of God, the teens had commandeered the front pews on the organ side of the church, close to the pulpit, an alternative family to join.
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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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