At the end of the first song the song leader said to me, “Would you like to join the singing class?
I had never been to William Shelton’s church, a Primitive Baptist Church up in the mountains near Walnut, North Carolina. I did not know that if you wanted to sing, you were supposed to go down front, up on the platform, and join the “singing class.”
I said “Yes” and I got up from my pew, went down there, and sang with the singing class, sad songs mostly, about toil and hardship and sin.
I’m a Baptist, too, but I had never been in a Baptist Church like this one.
- In Sunday school the leader read a chapter from the New Testament while we listened. No one said anything. Everybody then took a turn reading a few verses until we had read the chapter again. Then the leader read it a third time. That was it. Sunday school was over. If you wanted to know what it all meant, ask the Holy Spirit.
- When we went back into the sanctuary William and some other men were sitting together in chairs on the platform, off to one side of the preacher. They were the “Amen Corner,” something I’d heard about all my life but had never seen. When the pastor said something they really agreed with, one of the men, sometimes two or three, would say in a loud voice, “Amen!”
- Just before the sermon the preacher and everybody else prayed in tongues. Everyone in church, it seemed like, was praying, loudly, at the same time.
- The pastor preached in a sing-song voice, the kind I used to hear on country radio stations, slamming his open hand down on the lectern and stomping his foot to emphasize his points. And when he began to sweat, he wiped his forehead with a white handkerchief.
- At the end of the sermon, the preacher stood in front of the congregation, about 100 people, and the men in the “Amen Corner” filed by, hugged him, and then took their place beside him, hugging each other as they formed a line. And then the whole congregation did the same thing. Before it was over everyone in the church, including me, had hugged everyone else in the church.
And then the church bells rang and it was time to go home.
When we got in William’s pickup truck I didn’t say a word. Neither did he, at first. The service was so unlike anything I had ever experienced I didn’t know what to say.
We rode a couple of miles and then he broke the silence.
“I’ve been to Mary’s church in Charlotte,” he said, referring to his daughter, Mary Sue Porter. Her church, First Baptist, is about as mainline as they come. “I know my church is different.”
That was all that was said.
Coming Friday: Blow In Their Ear, Carefully