My father told me a story about my Granddaddy this past summer that I’d never heard before.
My paternal Grandfather was Baptist, like me. A real Baptist. The one who believed in organizational autonomy and the beauty of the Lottie Moon Offering. The kind who loved his pastor but formed opinions on his own, who knew the Bible well but didn’t weaponize or cherry-pick it to make a point or win an argument. The kind who might’ve leaned more conservative than me but believed God calls us all to one another. The kind who, when he said he was praying for you, he meant it. The kind whose personal understanding of evangelism leaned most heavily on how he treated those with whom he came into contact each day, not by becoming blindly loyal to a pastor, church, party or Super-PAC.
Although his Baptist church would not have welcomed me, a woman, into the pulpit, I never, ever doubted his belief in me — that God called me, as I was, even in spite of that one time I cussed during a game of “Clue” when I was 8 years old and my brothers still won’t let me live it down.
Molly Shoulta Tucker
I now have and reference his personal copy of The Baptist Deacon Handbook, copyright 1991, with the typewriter label of his name still affixed on the front.
Sitting around the dinner table last summer, Dad recalled when he was a little boy, he used to ride around with my grandfather as he made deliveries around the Paducah area in Western Kentucky. Upon one stop at a downtown building in the early 1960s, Dad noticed two water fountains, side by side. In the midst of segregation and Jim Crow, just prior to the 1965 Civil Rights Act, two water fountains meant the accepted and enacted belief system of the day — held in place by many Christians — was that there was a superior race.
Dad, a young child at the time, inquired about the absurdity of the separate water fountains.
Granddaddy looked at the signs and, without a history lesson, without explaining the law of the land, without cracking a Bible, said: “That isn’t right.”
Then, he — a white man — leaned down and took a sip from the “colored” water fountain. I don’t know this for sure, but I like to imagine he did this to show my dad love isn’t something we simply preach about or donate to; it’s something we continuously learn about and act upon.
As Dad told the story, tears filled his eyes. They filled mine, too. Being brokenhearted for society’s outcast seems to run in my Baptist blood.
“Being brokenhearted for society’s outcast seems to run in my Baptist blood.”
I had the privilege of knowing my maternal and paternal grandparents for a good portion of my life. They were all children of the Great Depression and represented a different era of religious thought. I often think, “I wonder what they’d say in this moment.”
For me, Granddaddy’s words echo forth from a different time: “That isn’t right.”
In the Gospel of John, there’s a story of a woman caught in adultery who is dragged into the temple. Leaders take her to Jesus, exclaiming that Mosaic law demanded she be stoned to death. They ask Jesus his opinion, intending to trap him.
Jesus responds, “Let anyone who is without sin cast the first stone.”
In other words, Jesus recognized the generations-old law did not accurately represent the rich mercy of God.
In other words: “That isn’t right.”
Our neighbors — many of whom have countries of origin that are the recipients of those beloved Lottie Moon Offerings — are afraid. They are here because this country promised a freedom and peace they were not promised at home. But now they are being terrorized.
“They are here because this country promised a freedom and peace they were not promised at home.”
That isn’t right.
Perhaps the immigration system isn’t perfect, but how much more could lawyers and attorneys do to help asylum seekers and undocumented people than paying bizarre lump-sum sign-on bonuses to poorly trained masked men?
That isn’t right.
More than anything, when my grandchildren learn about me through the eyes of my children, I hope they’ll remember I stood on the side of mercy. I hope they know the heart of my faith was not based on an evangelical soul-saving tally system, but how I reacted when the world wasn’t acting with mercy — when it was my generation’s turn to stand up to say, “That isn’t right.”
May all people of faith — Baptist and not — in following in the footsteps of Jesus, have the courage to say, as Granddaddy said: “That isn’t right.”
Molly Shoulta Tucker serves as pastor of Ridgewood Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky., and as chair of BWIM’s board of directors.