The souvenir booklet from the dedication of the building was fittingly lavish for a church edifice which rivaled any house of worship in America. Exactly a century ago, in 1908, the Second Baptist Church of St. Louis, Mo., then the oldest Protestant church in the city, entered a grand building built in the Italianate style. The main sanctuary seated 1,700 and was a basilica with a rose window 14 feet across. There were vaulted side arches reminiscent of the cathedrals of Europe. The interior columns were of green stone on marble bases and with golden capitals. The botanical designs over the windows were reflective of plants mentioned in the Bible. At the front was a magnificent display of organ pipes.
Fred Anderson
Second Baptist had a state-of-the-art educational plant for the beginning of the 20th-century. A banquet hall would seat 300. A free-standing bell tower, illuminated in the evenings, soared over 240 feet into the sky and near the top, there was a balcony from which 100 persons could stand and view the city. An inner courtyard included a 40-foot-long reflecting pool with a fountain which supplied the water from a lion's mouth.
The interior photographs in the souvenir booklet show oak pews, throne-like pulpit furniture, a ladies' parlor with loveseat and rockers around a fireplace and a Sunday school assembly room with hundreds of bentwood chairs ready to receive the pupils. The photos, deplete of people, have the eerie resemblance to those of the staterooms from the Titanic.
But there were people to fill the rooms in 1908. On the dedication Sunday, “a large congregation, taxing the utmost capacity,” gathered for the services. These began with the baptism of 12 persons. As the pastor descended into the baptistery, he held a jar of water from the Jordan and said: “I mingle the waters of the Jordan and those of the Mississippi, in token of the fact that the sacred stream of the East and the waters of the West could be consecrated to no nobler purpose than that of serving the beautiful ordinance ….”
St. Louis's Second Baptist Church
The church embraced the life and work of both the Northern and Southern Baptist conventions in a grand experiment of cooperation. The building had been built for the ages. But by the mid-20th-century, a combination of factors brought great decline and eventually a relocation to a smaller building and the abandonment of the dual affiliation with both conventions.
Tucked on the last pages of the old booklet is a statement of the church's ideals. It is one of the finest surveys of Baptist principles and distinctives. In part, it reads as follows:
“The foundation tenet of Baptists is that God and every soul are so related that nothing is to be thrust between them. We hold to the ‘competency of the soul Godward.' Hence we reject priesthoods, disbelieve in any spiritual efficacy of baptismal waters or of communion bread and wine, and refuse to recognize human authority in the religious life. Jesus, the Christ, who makes known to us God's moral character, is our only spiritual Authority.
“All members of a Baptist church have equal rights and privileges. Their duties and influence are measured by personal ability. The minister serves, teaches and leads according to his gifts. His rank depends upon his character and mental and social equipment.
“No local church, any more than a civil power, can invade a member's conscience, or interfere with his right of private interpretation of the Scriptures, or with his pursuit of truth anywhere. Every Baptist, unfettered by an authoritative creed, is free to think, and should do so aided by the help that the God of light gives to all seekers for truth.
“Each Baptist church, therefore, is independent of every other. Churches in a city, state or nation voluntarily associate for larger and better service to mankind than one church alone could render. Such organizations, however, can neither legislate for, nor act as courts of appeal from, a local church.
“It follows that types of Baptist churches vary according to the prevailing views of those who compose them. These variations should be expected, and have a right to exist. Uniformity, in creed, or worship, or activity, or attitude towards questions current at any given time, is not a Baptist ideal. True liberalism grants liberty to others, and loves them none the less for taking it. Both among members of a church, and in the relations of churches to one another, our unity is that of the spirit, and our bond is love. Our oneness is not due to outside ecclesiastical pressure, but to inner spiritual kinship. We value organization only as it promotes life.
“Our ideals are to help every person to live ‘the eternal life,' or the life of fellowship with God here and now, as shown by Jesus in his spirit, aims and service to mankind, and to promote ‘the kingdom of God,' or that world-wide social condition in which all persons shall live as children of the heavenly Father, and therefore as members of his family.
“All truth, through whatever medium it comes, is God's truth. It is to be reverently and thankfully received and obeyed in life. Our pulpit aims to appreciate and to use the spiritual value of all facts that our wonderful world of education is so richly revealing. Truth and the soul were made for each other as seed and soil. We trust the ‘Spirit of truth' to use his own implement to culture our religious lives.”
The grand building served Second Church only a relatively short time. The church experienced changes. But the ideals — the last and least part of the souvenir booklet from a century ago — remain characteristic of many churches which yet wear the name of Baptist. Sometimes what remains is the most important thing of all.
Fred Anderson is executive director of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society and the Center for Baptist Heritage and Studies. He may be contacted at [email protected] or at P.O. Box 34, University of Richmond, VA 23173.