After my father’s death in 2009, I found a box of
reel-to-reel audio tapes in the garage of his home in the California desert. I
had seen them pretty much all my life, most of that time in a battered plastic
bin on a closet shelf or stacked in the garage. I can’t recall the last time I saw
a reel-to-reel tape machine, so I had never heard the tapes. But Mother (she
died in 2011) once told me they were recordings of my father’s sermons.
They were a little backed up and said it might take a while;
I couldn’t convincingly demand a rush job, as the tapes were from the 1950’s,
so I let them deal with them on their own timeline. I received a call to come
and pick them up earlier this week.
I did so – and yes, indeed, they contained Dad’s sermons. In
fact, entire worship services from the early years of his career, before I had
been born. I believe these were recorded from his first full pastorate at First
Baptist Church of Oliver Springs,
in East Tennessee.
In this blog, I’ll share my observations after listening to
the tapes from family, cultural, and faith perspectives.
It isn’t hard for me to conjure up the sound of Dad’s voice
in my memory, but I didn’t recognize it on the tapes. My first thought was
disappointment, thinking they were recordings of a visiting pastor. But
eventually I realized a few things.
Dad was much younger then, and our voices do change with
age. He was also much more “Southern” sounding. Dad was born and raised in East
Tennessee – a region whose people are either outright mountain folks, or very
much influenced by mountain culture with its distinctive accent.
(This region is geographically known as Appalachia, although Southerners from
the region – at least in my experience – don’t refer to themselves as “Appalachians,”
but rather by their Southern, statewide, or local identities. And by the way, if
you do describe this mountain region by its geographical designation, please take
care to pronounce it correctly.)
Also, Dad was speaking in the East Tennessean ecclesiastical
tradition: that is, “church speaking.” Prayers, for example, were always spoken
in King James English. (Other translations of the Bible were available in those
days, but never read in a proper Baptist church – and often regarded with
suspicion. My Dad’s library, however, featured what must have been every
English language Bible and Greek New Testament in publication. He was partial
to the J.B. Phillips
translation, but often preached directly from his Greek New Testament,
translating as he read.)
And there is an emphatic quality to his speaking – a rising
and falling of tone, and a careful, selective emphasis – that was taught in the
seminaries that produced young Baptist ministers in those days. Dad had
attended both Southwestern and Southeastern
Baptist Theological Seminaries, ultimately taking his Divinity degree from Southeastern in Wake Forest, North Carolina. In
the mid 1970’s, Dad took up his first non-Southern pastorate, in Gardena,
California. During that experience and the years to follow, his Southern accent
in general, as well as his preaching style, certainly mellowed.
There are other characteristics of worship services during
that period that are notable, at least to one raised largely in a succession of
small town Baptist churches.
Preaching and praying were taken seriously in those days.
And sermons were more formulaic than their modern-day counterparts. They
focused much on the Gospel message – each sermon was expected to deliver the
Gospel – and they lay as close as possible to scripture. The Bible readings were
lengthy, and the preaching wasn’t expected to deviate much from that text except
for the occasional observational anecdote. The sermon linked below from II
Kings, the story when Elijah passes the flame so to speak to his successor
Elisha, is illustrated with a brief anecdote from Dad’s seminary days relating
to a Billy Graham Crusade. (Such a story today would often be told in a lighter
tone. Jokes weren’t much of a feature of sermons in the period.)
Likewise, worship music was quite formal. You’ll hear organ
music and choral singing (it’s not hard to pick out Dad’s big baritone in the
choir; he had been the beneficiary of singing lessons as a child, and many’s
the neck I’d seen pop and swivel in the churches we’d visited over the years as
Dad cut that big voice loose with a hymn during singing services).
Perhaps most notable to me is content. Sermons of the period
spoke persistently of the impoverished spiritual state of humankind, defining
the need for redemption – and calling explicitly for the same during the
service. This what we called the “invitation” in my day, although some call it
the “altar call.” And it seems to have largely disappeared from services of the
contemporary era. Additionally, there is a certain vocabulary in use: words and
phrases that are sprinkled (sorry: that’s a bad joke) through hymns,
lessons, sermons, and prayers.
Despite the formulaic nature of the period, it’s helpful to
recognize that Baptist churches are often vastly less structured than mainline
protestant churches. Baptist churches are congregationally-led – that is,
governed by the members of their congregations rather than by authority figures.
They are also autonomous. There is no human authority outside the membership of
a local church, whose members alone have the sole authority to buy and sell
church property, hire and fire church staff, and chart the church’s course in
matters small and large. No bishops, no courts, no presbyterys, or synods. Just
baptized (and therefore qualified to vote) church members in the pews.
This ecclesiastical anarchy affects the Baptist tradition
and practice in numerous ways, subtle and profound – and can lead to
misunderstandings between Baptists and their brothers and sisters who practice
the Christian faith in other traditions. For example, Baptist bodies such as
the Southern Baptist Convention exist to funnel money from its member churches
into common causes and resources – but they have no governing authority over
their member churches and cannot act on their behalf. Try explaining that “structure”
to a roomful of Roman Catholics.
But back to Dad’s sermon tapes. I treasure these artifacts
of an earlier age. For me, in terms of faith tradition, it’s a time capsule. I
no longer live in the South, although I miss it sorely. And I’ve drifted, largely
for reasons of geography, into American Baptist Churches rather than the
Southern Baptists of my boyhood.
And they bring to mind many, many hours seated (often
squirming) on a hard, wooden pew, with Dad’s voice rolling across an often hot
and sticky church sanctuary.
Most of all, I miss my Dad. Rest in peace.
https://youtu.be/Aik5edKmjgs
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