Editor’s note: Susan Whitlow of Morehead City, N.C., who grew up at Kilmarnock Baptist Church, delivered a eulogy at the funeral of John Houghton Jan. 16. Houghton served the church for 35 years as its pastor and for years thereafter in retirement as a member. Whitlow’s words are encouraging to pastors who sometimes wonder if they are getting through to their congregations. Houghton’s pastoral practices beautifully illustrate a magnanimity that has been called the “Virginia temperament.”
The book currently on my nightstand is one of selected readings on the philosophy of religion. It’s there because 50 years ago a small-town preacher took an interest in a young girl’s questions.
Susan Whitlow |
John Houghton was called to Kilmarnock (Va.) Baptist Church when I was at what the church called, “the age of accountability.” This was the time when my friends in other denominations were having their first communions and confirmations. Baptists had “believer’s baptisms” and I was a believer, but I was also a skeptic.
Mr. Houghton conducted a class for new members and in it I learned that belief and doubt were opposite sides of the same coin. I don’t recall that he ever told us to accept something merely on faith. I can’t imagine that any question was ever deemed inappropriate. If we wanted to wrestle with a verse of Scripture or a tenet of the Church, he provided the arena to do so.
He lent me books from his own library, by Bultmann, Niebuhr and others. He gave us teenagers a place at the table in congregational discussions and created an atmosphere where Sunday school teachers and Training Union leaders let us practice thinking outside the box before that phrase gained popular acceptance.
I’m only one of dozens of young people nurtured in that church house, as he liked to call it. Many of us were baptized there and later, as we matured, married there. John loved children and it showed. He always made us feel welcome and we enjoyed being with him.
Because I lived right next door, I dropped by any time. After all, he wasn’t doing anything except maybe reading and writing! I shudder now, of course, to think how irritating those interruptions must have been, but he never let on. He treated me as he treated all people, with respect.
He encouraged diversity of thought and lively dialogue within the community of faith. As a result, we learned to think more deeply and consider things more broadly. John let us know that it was all right to be the devil’s advocate without worrying about going to the devil. He was a wonderful pastor, minister and all other things that the clergy are called to be, but he was foremost a teacher, a resident theologian. He established in us a deep love for learning that need not be reserved for the secular life alone.
He loved language, especially the Greek and Hebrew of biblical texts. His sermons often began with the etymology of a single word and then grew organically into the larger scriptural passage as he explained the context. He didn’t need to tell us HOW to apply the message to contemporary life because, if we were listening, it was all there in the words he had just elucidated.
Familiar words in Deuteronomy tell people of faith to love the Lord with all our hearts, and with all our soul, and with all our strength. And in Mark and Luke, Jesus adds — and with all our minds. John loved the Lord with a brilliant mind. It seems grossly unfair that, in his last years, it was his mind that disease attacked.
Yet just as his DNA lives on in his children and grandchildren, his mind — and, indeed, his heart and his soul and his strength — live on in those of us who grew up in his congregation. His influence equipped us to be engaged in our own lives and in the life of the Church.
Parents know that they can give their children primarily two things: roots and wings. In his time at Kilmarnock Baptist Church, they are exactly what he gave us, and we are the richer for it.