Fred Anderson

Last month this columnist spoke in a “Virginia Baptist” church in a very far corner of Southwest Virginia. Actually, my speaking engagement was at First Baptist Church of Dalton, as in Dalton, Georgia. In 2006 the Georgia church joined the…

Bill Jenkins once was described as “firm, fair and faithful.” Roland Byrd, the long-time Baptist campus minister at Virginia Tech, who was describing his former boss and mentor in ministry, said, “Bill encouraged us and helped us to do what…

Baptists have no founder. They have no certain month, day and year of beginning. It is risky at best to find the earliest tender roots of a people who have become one of the world's major religious denominations. Across the…

Ann Fitzgerald Brown's family was in the telephone business. Her great-grandfather put in a telephone from his house to his store and a telephone company was started. It was all about people getting connected with one another in the rural…

Robert Baylor Semple dipped his quill into an inkwell and wrote: “This church was stricken off from Hermitage ….” He was referring to Zoar Baptist Church; and in 1810 he devoted one long paragraph to the Middlesex County church in…

Earl Scott claimed that he was “no hero.” As proof, he cited that he won no medals. But he did have war stories. He liked to tell about his “window on the Battle of the Bulge.” It was a pilot's…

Last week's column told about my character portrayal of William E. Hatcher, the noted old-time preacher, when he recently had a return engagement in Baltimore where he served as a pastor in the 1860s. This week's column tells about a…