Randy's Ruminations

While driving in the coal mining mountains of southwest Virginia I happened across a sign that caught my attention. It pointed down a road to the Old Regular Baptist Church.

The very words “old, regular” strike a deep chord in the world of churches. Most people who have been a Christian for some years understand the pull.

There are many who have deep feelings for “old, regular” church – church as they knew it growing up or in early adult years.

In one of the museums on the trip I ran across this sign:

The struggle between old and new has been going on a long, long time.

All of us today are the product of “new” churches and ways of doing things. That is, they were new at one point in time. But that point in time may have preceded us so it seems old.

There is an inherent “conservatism” in church life. After all, the church worships an eternal God who has been around a long time. The coming of God to earth in his incarnate form (Jesus) was 2,000 years ago. We are disciples of a man and Way that is 2,000 years old. The written word of God that guides our practice was finished 1900 years ago. So there is the constant pull to “look to the past” and keep things “old” and “regular.”

By and large that serves the church well. Our faith is a historical faith.

But, of course, this looking to the Jesus and the Word revealed to us in the past can easily become nostalgia and stagnation for ways of church life that are peripheral to maintaining the core faith

The singing of the Old Regular Baptists of Appalachia is a historic cultural form that the Smithsonian has recorded to preserve. (It is line-led, acappella, and what I would term “free-form” – you hardly recognize an old tune. If you are curious, do an internet search.) While it may be deeply meaningful to the few who practice it, it is not a form of worship hymnody that is going to connect and be meaningful to most people.

All kinds of forms and traditions get “canonized.” They are very hard to change. They are important to people and changing them creates problems. But they can also become unnecessary barriers for people seeking to see Jesus. While the apostle Paul was very concerned about maintaining “healthy” doctrine, he also was willing to “become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some.” We seldom come anywhere near engaging in “all possible means.” Some would complain loudly if that really were our M/O.

An anecdote: on vacation we met with a church where this announcement was made. “There will be a meeting of the men of the congregation after the service to pick a new phone number for the church.” I’m sure I cannot begin to feel how my wife felt upon hearing that announcement. She found it demeaning and offensive.

I grew up with the tradition of “men’s business meetings” in a church context, but really now, are women unqualified to voice an opinion in the choosing of a phone number? Are they prevented by God from doing so? Is this “healthy” doctrine or practice?

I suspect in the insular world of that group of Christians neither the men nor the women thought much about it. But they should try to hear it from the perspective of the seeker who came that morning to see what Jesus might have to say to his/her life. To be a healthy church we always need to be asking ourselves, “Why?” and “What does this communicate?”

Another type of loss is that paid by families of heroes. Daniel Boone led his family and others through the Cumberland Gap opening up a whole new territory to settlement. Boone is honored as a brave pioneer. But there was a high cost.

In 1773 he attempted the first migration through the gap. Part of the group was slightly separated from the rest and was attacked by Indians. James Boone, Daniel’s teenage son, was killed in the attack. The group buried their dead and turned back.

In 1775 Boone successfully led his family and a larger group through the gap and into Kentucky. He had to pass by his eldest son’s grave in doing so.

All achievement comes at a cost. It was Jesus who said to count that cost. What has your achievement cost? Have there been friends who fell by the wayside? Children estranged or lost in the wilderness? Boone also had a daughter kidnapped by Indians. In your trek have you had a child kidnapped by the world?

What achievements are worth what costs? That is one of life’s biggest questions.

As I remember it, Colonial America and the Revolution were all about New England: Congregational churches, Harvard, Yale, the Boston tea party, Paul Revere, Lexington and Concord. The bias was definitely toward New England and the Pilgrims. Oh, “Jamestown 1607” was a fact, but it was the pilgrims that mattered. America was settled by people seeking religious freedom who landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620.

But not so fast. First of all, the Pilgrims only came for their own religious freedom. They began as reformers in the Anglican church, but got the cold shoulder that most reformers get. They gave up on the State church and became “Separatists.” They received the hot persecution response that such religious rebels typically experienced in history. So they began to search out other lands where they could do church their way. The best known result is the Pilgrims of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. But they did not allow religious freedom for others. No, one had to flee to Rhode Island to find any freedom. In fact, Massachusetts had an established state church until 1833 – the last state to disband such an establishment.

But there is another, earlier thread of Anglo-American history that is very important and, in some ways, more influential. That is Virginia.

Consider this: by the time the Johnny-come-lately Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts in 1620 these things had already happened:

Jamestown was 13 years old

Pocahontas had been baptized, married an Englishman, moved to London and died. (1617)

Virginia was shipping tons of tobacco to England

Africans had already been brought to Jamestown (1619)

Representative government in America was in session (1619)

German and Italian craftsmen were moving to Jamestown to set up sawmills and glass production (1620)

Modern America began as a venture capital startup in Jamestown in 1607. This is our real taproot.

Jamestown was not a religious undertaking, but a business venture startup underwritten by venture capitalists (though I’m sure they weren’t called that) in London. This enterprise was called The Virginia Company, chartered by King James in 1606.

They were religious to be sure. Everything was “God and Country.” (When Henry VIII broke with Rome and established the Church of England, he removed the crucifix from the front of the cathedral and replaced it with a seal that included the words “God and Country.” You might reflect on the impact of that theology.) But this American colony was a business venture.

The hope in London was for Virginia gold and a water route to the Orient. Since neither happened, the colony attempted to be economically viable by raising silkworms, shipping wood, and glass production. But it was tobacco that finally hit the jackpot.

(In spite of the opinion of King James in A Counterblaste to Tobacco who called tobacco “a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and the black stinking fume thereof nearest resembling the horrible stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.... (It pollutes the) inward parts...with an unctuous and oily kinde of soote.”)

Politically, the first representative assembly in the New World convened in the Jamestown church on July 30, 1619. The General Assembly met in response to orders from the Virginia Company "to establish one equal and uniform government over all Virginia" which would provide "just laws for the happy guiding and governing of the people there inhabiting."

It was Virginia that established religious freedom with Jefferson’s A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom in 1785. (As already indicated, Massachusetts had a state church until 1833.) The key statement is

"Be it therefore enacted by the General Assembly, that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities."

Jefferson was so proud of this accomplishment that he decreed it would be one of 3 things listed on his grave monument. (The other two are being the author of the Declaration of Independence and founder of the University of Virginia. He omitted being President of the US.)

Speaking of presidents, 4 of the first 5 were Virginians; 6 of 10; 7 of 12. That alone speaks volumes. (The Virginians were Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Harrison, Tyler and Taylor – and later Woodrow Wilson, 8 in all.)

I will go on a limb and posit that the venture capital origin of our society at Jamestown has been a major shaping force in our history and culture. Surely is it part of the American “can do” spirit and shaped our pioneer spirit of progress, invention and risk, which has, in turn, impacted the world.

On the negative side, “business first” didn’t fret much about native populations or ecology and seduced Virginia into accepting slavery – all of which has also had huge repercussions.

Finally, an anecdote: One of the sites I was most interested in seeing in Virginia was the McLean house at Appomattox Court House where Lee surrendered to Grant. In pre-trip reading I was shocked and dismayed to learn that the current home is a rebuilt version. What happened to Wimer McLean's house? In 1891 a speculator bought it and dismantled it with the venture scheme of hauling it to the 1893 Chicago Exposition to reconstruct it as a tourist attraction. He ran out of money and the pieces of the home left on the ground at Appomattox were scavenged by vandals and by tourists as relics - an unfortunate, but American story!