GENEVA, Switzerland — The visitor climbs the steep hillside paved with unforgiving cobblestones and follows the looming image of Saint-Pierre Cathedral, the church of John Calvin. Located hard by the cathedral is an imposing three-story mansion of classical architecture. It…
Table talk
The visitor to the Heritage Gallery of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society was ready to leave. He rather intently had examined each of the panels in the religious liberty mural. We knew that he was a professor of law and…
Reaching for a star
In May this columnist was a guest speaker at Manly Memorial Baptist Church in Lexington. The announced topic was on examples of loyalty from within the history of the congregation. While his mouth was speaking, his eyes were scanning the…
Our Miss Alma
Alma Hunt had a healthy appetite. Among her thousands of stories which she delighted in retelling on herself, there was the story of the man who observed the petite Miss Hunt eating and exclaimed, “You have an amazing appetite!” And…
Rough & Ready
For 75 years there has been a Baptist witness in a section of Henry County which once had the name of Rough & Ready, likely after the Rough & Ready Mills which dated to the 1870s. Indeed some of the…
Where loyalty reigns
It was Loyalty Sunday on May 18, 2008, at Manly Memorial Baptist Church in Lexington and the day has been observed for so long that no one seems to recall its origin. But it really does not matter because loyalty…
Sharing memories
“It has been sooo long ago,” explained Martha Thomas by way of explanation, just in case her memories were not forthcoming. She need not have fretted. A month shy of her 100th birthday, Martha Thomas did not miss a beat…
Building relationships
Sutton Wirt, the oldest son of the pastor, stuck his head into the sanctuary of Burkeville Baptist Church and exclaimed: “There's more people in there than I've ever seen at church.” He was referring to the gathering of two congregations,…
Standing fast in liberty
In the days when they called themselves “colored,” the African-American Baptists of Southside Virginia decided that they needed to organize a new district association. Hasadiah Baptist Association was so large that it covered 200 miles across 21 counties and included…