Thirty years ago this fall the editor and associate editor of the Religious Herald, Julian H. Pentecost and Tom Miller, respectively, invited this soon-to-be-columnist to lunch. They presented a proposition that their lunch guest begin to write a Baptist history and heritage column which would appear regularly in the paper.
We all have heard that there is no such thing as a free lunch and my positive response has cost many times the price of that meal. But the satisfaction has been priceless. It opened a channel to share Baptist history and it opened doors into thousands of homes. Just this week a complete stranger said that we have been friends for years because of the column.
Fred Anderson
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Maybe there had been a kernel of interest in a column all along. As a boy, the Christian Index, the Georgia Baptist paper, came to our home and I remember reading former editor Louie D. Newton’s column about churches he visited. He sprinkled his column with interesting asides about people, churches and history. While in college, I was a regular columnist for our school newspaper.
The Herald column began modestly and expanded. It continued and never missed a published issue except for three columns which fell to the cutting room floor. It survived three editorships and several changes in the paper’s format. To date there have been exactly 1,157 different stories on a variety of topics. It is easily the longest running column in the long history of a paper which dates to 1828.
The column may have been provincial because it mainly covered Virginia Baptists. My field of study, my sources and my constituency across those three decades was Virginian and the Herald was considered “the state Baptist paper.” In that period someone coined the phrase that “Virginia is our garden and the world is our field.” My larger vision came as I began to attend meetings of the Baptist World Alliance and met persons from numerous other gardens.
In reviewing the body of work, the column generally fell into three categories: people, places and principles. With 300 years of Virginia Baptist history, the well never went dry. The column introduced interesting folk, past and present, obscure and prominent, men and women. The first genius of Baptists is that we are many and diverse.
The column took readers to places — mainly churches across Virginia. Many small churches in hills, hollows and byways were given attention. The second genius of Baptists is that we have respected each and every church, no matter how small, as complete within itself and worthy of note.
The column examined time-honored Baptist principles. These included regenerated church membership, believer’s baptism, priesthood of the believer, congregational democracy, religious liberty and separation of church and state. They emphasized the high regard for the individual within Baptist life. The third genius of our people is that they generally have held true to the same basic Baptist principles across the centuries.
A well-known preacher once observed that “it is obvious from the column that you like preachers.” He was right. They are interesting, worthy of attention and greatly influence Baptist life. But the column also has cast the spotlight on numerous laypersons. Among Baptists, it has been observed that the ground is all level with no priestly class.
Sometimes the column hammered on a current issue. The writer has tried to honor the adage that “those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.” Baptists have repeated some mistakes across the centuries and partly because their memories were not long enough to remember what had happened.
In three decades of writing, I can remember only one negative response from a reader. The column had mentioned something about Mosby’s Rangers and quoted an historian as saying that they were a band of murderers. A Southern loyalist called me and took issue with the statement. She was a descendant of one of Mosby’s men. She questioned my Southern heritage. She imagined that the columnist surely was a Yankee or at least a Yankee sympathizer. When she heard my syrupy Georgia drawl, she was soothed. When I explained that it was only a quotation from an historian, she still took issue that it should never have been repeated.
Based upon my mail, some of the favorite writings have been those that were personal. The ones which drew the most comments and requests for copies were those written as if to my grandchildren. In the first one, “Letter to Zachary,” the little baby was welcomed into the world and given an instructional manual on what it might mean to someday become a Baptist.
“Letter to Zachary” concluded with the following: “If you become a Baptist or wear the label of any other Christian denomination, you have a sacred opportunity and obligation to study God’s Word and to look for God’s revelations. I came to know Reuben Alley in his sunset years. When he was editor of the Religious Herald, he once wrote: ‘Since human capacity for truth is infinitely less than God, no individual or group of individuals can comprehend the full meaning of Jesus Christ. Many doors to truth stand open. Every man starts from where he lives in his search for God, and everyone finds abundant satisfaction through faith.’”
Those were heady words for an infant. But the column continued and, in time, Zachary reached young adulthood, made his own faith decision to accept Christ and to be baptized and join a Baptist church. He has taken his place in the long continuing story of a great and useful people. There is plenty more history to be made and endless heritage to explore.
Fred Anderson ([email protected]) is executive director of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society and the Center for Baptist Heritage and Studies.