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…
Freedom of the Spirit
Next week, on Friday, April 11, the University of Richmond inaugurates its ninth president, Edward Ayers, who is an historian by profession. Ever since its humble yet hopeful beginnings, the University of Richmond (as academy, seminary, college and, since 1920,…
On her own
Virginia Pilcher Provence, pushing 90 at the time, went on her own to the Baptist World Alliance's Centennial Congress in Birmingham, England, in the summer of 2005. She investigated and learned that dorm rooms were available at a college. She…
Gathering of the tribes
The opening session of the New Baptist Covenant was like being in church — a very large Baptist church with a huge congregation. African-American Baptists were dressed in their Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes with those fantastic church hats. The younger generation of…