more like grape juice, in the same way that Methuselah wasn’t 969 years old in our years).
The only culture I knew growing up was church culture. Everyone I knew went to services on Sunday, but there was also choir practice and Wednesday-night prayer meeting and youth group. The church also served as an informal social club, a place to meet your friends, a place to stand around in the parking lot and catch up after services were done. Teenagers did this, of course, but so did grown men, the women not so much. The women had what they called circle meetings, where they met ineach other’s homes every month for Bible study and refreshments—the Southern Protestant equivalent of book group. Then there were funerals and weddings, with the receptions held in the church activities room (always dry: I never attended a wedding where alcohol was served until I was an adult). Some churches sponsored softball leagues, and there were blanket drives and church suppers, and once a year there was revival week, where preachers famed for their stem-winding oratory were imported to preach every night, although back then no one but holy rollers talked about being born again. But while the South of my childhood was every bit as religious as the South is today, churches then were less aggressive about competing for your time. They were more willing to share you with the Elks or the bridge club. And they never stuck their noses into politics. Perhaps they didn’t compete because there was so little to compete with. Life then was no less complicated than it is today, but it was a lot emptier. There was less to do and more time to do it in. Some people went to church just to get out of the house.
My uncle’s church in Winston-Salem was in an old neighborhood thick with churches. The Methodists and the Baptists had staked their claims only a block away. I always wanted to sneak into the Baptist church to see their baptismal pool, after I learned that Baptists believed in total immersion, but I was never given the chance, ecumenism being preached in our family but not practiced with much diligence. My aunt and uncle never criticized other sects or denominations, but I was gently led to understand that our way, the Presbyterian way, was simply better, more efficient. I’m sure the same discussions went on in the respective homes of Ford and Dodge dealers. With Catholics and Jews, they just seemed exasperated. How could anyone be so silly as to thinkyou couldn’t pray directly to God? How could anyone ever doubt for a second that Jesus was the Messiah? But even here, it was like listening to someone extol the benefits of an automatic transmission over three on the tree. The closest I ever heard my uncle come to expressing even the mildest prejudice toward another religion was his fondness for the rhyme “How odd of God to choose the Jews.”
The one virulent prejudice my family harbored was toward what they considered the lower rungs of religion: the Pentecostals, snake handlers and faith healers like Oral Roberts, who was then the only preacher you ever saw on television, slapping people on the forehead and commanding them to be healed. Billy Graham was the one evangelist they respected (we went to hear him preach once, and I thought about following several people up to the front to profess my faith in Jesus but chickened out at the last minute, convinced that my meekness, like Peter’s, would earn me eternal disapproval from the Lord). That anyone, even someone who had never been to college or seminary, could just up and start preaching the Gospel was anathema in our family. Stump preachers were quacks just as surely as chiropractors. When we went out to eat, we said grace before the meal, but there was nothing ostentatious about that. We were just showing the flag. Still, religion was to me as water is to a fish: what I lived in, with no thought of an alternative. It was not only not a question of doubt, it was not even a question of
The only culture I knew growing up was church culture. Everyone I knew went to services on Sunday, but there was also choir practice and Wednesday-night prayer meeting and youth group. The church also served as an informal social club, a place to meet your friends, a place to stand around in the parking lot and catch up after services were done. Teenagers did this, of course, but so did grown men, the women not so much. The women had what they called circle meetings, where they met ineach other’s homes every month for Bible study and refreshments—the Southern Protestant equivalent of book group. Then there were funerals and weddings, with the receptions held in the church activities room (always dry: I never attended a wedding where alcohol was served until I was an adult). Some churches sponsored softball leagues, and there were blanket drives and church suppers, and once a year there was revival week, where preachers famed for their stem-winding oratory were imported to preach every night, although back then no one but holy rollers talked about being born again. But while the South of my childhood was every bit as religious as the South is today, churches then were less aggressive about competing for your time. They were more willing to share you with the Elks or the bridge club. And they never stuck their noses into politics. Perhaps they didn’t compete because there was so little to compete with. Life then was no less complicated than it is today, but it was a lot emptier. There was less to do and more time to do it in. Some people went to church just to get out of the house.
My uncle’s church in Winston-Salem was in an old neighborhood thick with churches. The Methodists and the Baptists had staked their claims only a block away. I always wanted to sneak into the Baptist church to see their baptismal pool, after I learned that Baptists believed in total immersion, but I was never given the chance, ecumenism being preached in our family but not practiced with much diligence. My aunt and uncle never criticized other sects or denominations, but I was gently led to understand that our way, the Presbyterian way, was simply better, more efficient. I’m sure the same discussions went on in the respective homes of Ford and Dodge dealers. With Catholics and Jews, they just seemed exasperated. How could anyone be so silly as to thinkyou couldn’t pray directly to God? How could anyone ever doubt for a second that Jesus was the Messiah? But even here, it was like listening to someone extol the benefits of an automatic transmission over three on the tree. The closest I ever heard my uncle come to expressing even the mildest prejudice toward another religion was his fondness for the rhyme “How odd of God to choose the Jews.”
The one virulent prejudice my family harbored was toward what they considered the lower rungs of religion: the Pentecostals, snake handlers and faith healers like Oral Roberts, who was then the only preacher you ever saw on television, slapping people on the forehead and commanding them to be healed. Billy Graham was the one evangelist they respected (we went to hear him preach once, and I thought about following several people up to the front to profess my faith in Jesus but chickened out at the last minute, convinced that my meekness, like Peter’s, would earn me eternal disapproval from the Lord). That anyone, even someone who had never been to college or seminary, could just up and start preaching the Gospel was anathema in our family. Stump preachers were quacks just as surely as chiropractors. When we went out to eat, we said grace before the meal, but there was nothing ostentatious about that. We were just showing the flag. Still, religion was to me as water is to a fish: what I lived in, with no thought of an alternative. It was not only not a question of doubt, it was not even a question of
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