Pulling the Lifebuoy soap from young Ralphie’s mouth, his mother interrogates, “Where did you hear that word?”
In this wonderful scene from the classic movie A Christmas Story, a voiceover of Ralphie reports he had heard the vulgarity several times a day from his father. However, he lies and says it was from his best friend, Schwartz, that he learned “the queen mother of dirty words.”
Based on social media chatter I recently encountered, if we remade the 1983 movie, the f-word might be replaced by the B-word. Ralphie causes a mishap for his father and says, “Oh, Baptist!” Except, since you apparently shouldn’t say “Baptist” in a PG movie, it would be cleaned up to a slow-motion “Ohhhhh backkkkkktwisssst.”
Brad Bull
Sadly, that lighthearted intro serves as just a spoonful of sugar to sweeten a bitter pill. A month since I saw the online chatter in question, my heart is still heavy from what I experienced when a bestselling progressive Christian author shared one of my articles on the social media site of his most popular book.
Introducing my piece, the author said, “Please read the article before commenting.” The link to access the article indicated it was from Baptist News Global. Amid the nearly 300 subsequent comments, most were constructively engaging. However, some folks refused to read the article because it was from a Baptist source. Here’s a sample of their comments. (Some of the comments contain profane words — other than “Baptist”):
- “The source is from Baptist News? Lol that says it all, no need to read.” (Note: Other commenters urged the person to reconsider.)
- “Baptist News! Certainly biased.”
- “No thanks. No time for narrow-minded Christians.”
- “No(.) It’s KKK shit.”
- “Baptists are to blame for (MAGA) bullshit.”
- “Baptists (N)ews (G)lobal? And you want me to read the article(.) Are you out of your f***ing mind?”
This triggered my all-too-familiar heartache, just in spades this time.
“I grew up proud of my Baptist roots in general and Southern Baptist heritage in particular.”
I grew up proud of my Baptist roots in general and Southern Baptist heritage in particular. One year at Royal Ambassador camp, I was the champion in Bible/Baptist trivia. Lottie Moon: The selfless missionary. The Cooperative Program: The system of pooling resources to minister to the world.
College and seminary added much more. Martin Luther King Jr.: The martyr for civil rights. John Leland: The pastor who lobbied James Madison for passage of the U.S. Bill of Rights. Obadiah Holmes: The deacon who was viciously flogged for leading a homebound man in private worship — an affront to the official church of Boston.
These were stories of nobility. This was what “Baptist” meant to me, even after the Southern Baptist Convention left its roots and I started affiliating with “a different kind of Baptist.”
Watching the SBC turned inside out and backward, I had come to mistrust folks inside the Baptist family, but I was still naive to the severity of the perception outside the family. When I started learning that perception, it was like waking from a bad dream, only to find myself in the ICU in even worse shape than in my dream. For instance, a few years ago, a minister friend from another denomination wrote expressing regret for holding me at arm’s length and said, “As I read your article, I was shocked that you didn’t sound like any of my preconceived notions of Baptists. Growing up, my mother told me, ‘Never trust a Baptist.’”
Prior to that, in 2001, one of my relatives told me a member of her Episcopal church approached her and said, “Is your nephew really a Baptist? I read his statement about separation of church and state a few times, and I couldn’t believe he’s a Baptist.” I told that to one of my former religion professors from the Baptist college I attended. He said: “Oh my. How sad that we Baptists are no longer associated with our own heritage of separation of church and state.”
“The perception of Baptists has gotten worse. It has moved from distrust to disdain.”
These first experiences with the perception of Baptists deeply saddened me. However, if the comments in that recent online discussion are any indication, the perception of Baptists has gotten worse. It has moved from distrust to disdain.
That’s agonizingly tragic.
If someone says, “You’re an idiot for believing the Earth is round,” do we worry about reputation? No, we don’t worry about accusations we know are patently false. We feel sorry for the person who thinks the earth is flat. The fact that someone is harsh to us may hurt in and of itself, but we only worry if we fear the accusation might have at least some truth. Thus, it is a shame that the word “Baptist” connotes narrow-minded, bigoted, crazy, selfish, power-hungry, anti-democratic — and such words as get bleeped on National Public Radio. It hurts because there is much truth to these accusations.
What do we do about it? I’m reminded of one of the late Steven Covey’s stories. A man said his wife constantly nagged him by phone when he was at conferences. He clarified that it was his second wife whom he met at a conference — while married to his first wife. He asked Covey what he could say to convince his second wife of his fidelity. Covey said something like, “My friend, you can’t talk your way out of a problem you behaved yourself into.”
We Baptists must remember that people are wounded and people are watching. We can’t blame “Schwartz” for our behavior. Just as Ralphie actually learned the “queen mother of dirty words” from his father, we have learned much foulness from our earthly forebears. We must reject the worst of them in favor of the eternally best revealed in Jesus.
Years ago, a movie critic reviewing A Christmas Story highlighted the wonderful storytelling of showing the mother dismiss Ralphie from his interrogation, pause contemplatively and then hesitantly taste the soap. After a few moments, she grimaces, gags and spits into the sink. While I’m not endorsing physical punishment or portraying God as doing such, let’s mix metaphors. In one sense, we see a loving parent taste pain in order to empathize with the experience of her child. So, the mother is something of a Christ figure — God become flesh so we know God knows our pain. In another sense, we can be reminded to taste the bitterness we offer others, repent and become better ambassadors not of secular power but of the Christmas story.
Brad Bull has served as a hospital chaplain, pastor, university professor and therapist.