I was born a poor Southern Baptist child.
Life was never easy for me.
Just kidding. I had a great childhood, fantastic parents and a smooth religious upbringing in a church that was conservative in a traditional sort of way, but never in that more eerie, fundamentalist manner. Our family was at church at least three times a week and often more frequently than that.
I have wonderful memories of playing around that large church building. Of summer camps and youth retreats. Of adults who truly cared about me and my welfare. They were, in many ways, everything good that church can be.
(Let me pause to give a “shout out” to the good folk at Victory Memorial – the living and those gone on.)
Perhaps what I treasure most was that my teachers and mentors at Victory taught me to take the Bible seriously. And I did. And I do.
The only problem was, that as I grew up to take the Bible seriously, I came to a different theology than theirs. It was similar to Southern Baptist, but not very. I explored and read and visited. My belief system had some commonalities with Nazarenes, but not quite. Some of the Church of God communities seemed pretty cool. The Methodists had their Wesley brothers, whom I admired.
But none were quite right.
Then, one day while visiting a used book store, as I'm wont to do, I came across a title that intrigued me: Living in Christian Community, by Art Gish. As my Bible studies had introduced me to the concept of communal living (as in the early church), the title caught me eye.
I bought the book and read it with much joy and relief. Here, at last, were people who believed as I did. Gish writes in his book about the Mennonites, the Hutterites, the Bruderhofs, the Quakers...in other words, what I now know as anabaptist (and related) theologies. Folk with a belief in a simple lifestyle and peacemaking.
It has been almost 20 years since my happy epiphany. In the time since, I've had the great good fortune to leave the Southern Baptist church and begin attending the strange medley of faith traditions that is Jeff Street Baptist Community here in Louisville. What transcendent joy there has been in this journey!
Perhaps another time, I'll write more on this. For now, I'll just leave a link to a source on anabaptists, for those who are curious.
On anabaptists:
http://www.anabaptist.org/
On Art and Peggy Gish - great folk right over in Ohio:
http://www.cpt.org/speakersbureau/gishart_info.htm
[sidenote: Art Gish also wrote Beyond the Rat Race as well as other material. Look for his stuff, which is often out of print.]
2 comments:
Your journey is similar to mine. I came to this by way of study about the Brudeerhof communities. The church I served at that time was taking the youth group to visit one of their communities. I began to study what they believed so I could answer questions about dress, theology and the like. I found that I was more in line with the beliefs of Menno Simons, Balthsar Hubmaier and Pilgram Marpeck than I was with John Calvin. It caused some pain and some persecution, but I am now ordained Mennonite.
Thank you for the referring website..enjoyed it so much. Many, many years ago I accompanied a Catholic friend for a retreat at a Mennonite hermitage.
They were lovely, they were gratious. But days afterward they sent the group a letter asking them not to come back because they were not anabaptist. Hadn't thought about it until your posting..now I understand. :o)
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