We Were a Peculiar People Once: Confessions of an Old-Time Baptist

By David Lyle Jeffrey

Most Baptists today have adapted rather well to the modern world—that is, they worship as they live, in ways that don’t much deviate from the general cultural milieu. It was not always so. In the past, the ways of Baptists were eccentric, their children were sometimes embarrassed by them, and their grandchildren were astonished by many features of their communal Christian life and practice, some of which now seem hilarious. Yet David Lyle Jeffrey shows that in their firm faith and strong character, these forebears still have much to teach. The legacy of "old-time" Baptists is rich: in ways we might not recognize, we are still living on spiritual capital they built up a century ago.

In this fast-paced and thought-provoking memoir, Jeffrey recalls growing up in the "old-time" Scottish Baptist tradition in rural Canada. With nostalgia, good humor, and sometimes lament, he considers his own theological and spiritual formation in a nearly vanished variety of Christian culture. Jeffrey reflects on events and customs that today may seem esoteric or quaint, perhaps even comical. Along the way, he considers the lessons a fading brand of Baptist life may hold for Baptists in the twenty-first century. Jeffrey offers witty and insightful commentary on theological matters such as sin, salvation, and grace, and practices like baptism, worship, and Sabbath-keeping.

The Baptists of Jeffrey’s youth encouraged abstinence from pleasures most folks took for granted. Their churches were often small, but they were the vital, stable hub of family and communal life through good times and bad, and had an extraordinary missional and evangelistic impact that belied their marginal status. This confessional recollection of a world of weird and wonderful "peculiar people" is an expression of Jeffrey’s gratitude to the ones he knew.

• Language: English
• Publisher: 1845 Books
• Release date: Apr 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781481318785

David Lyle Jeffrey

David Lyle Jeffrey, author of People of the Book: Christian Identity and Literary Culture (1996) and Houses of the Interpreter: Reading Scripture, Reading Culture (2003) is Distinguished Professor of Literature and the Humanities at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.

Book preview

front cover with an image of an old-timey white painted church

It is hard to imagine New England Puritanism without Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novels or Southern Protestantism apart from William Faulkner’s stories. Yet I am not aware of a comparable account of Canadian Calvinism. David Lyle Jeffrey’s unpretentious narrative has remedied that. Neither highbrow literature nor academic history, he offers up a tender and loving story about the faith and practice of a peculiar people. Baptists are peculiar enough, and old-time-strict-and-particular Scottish Baptists are peculiarly peculiar, but who knew they could be so interesting? Whatever you think you might know about this branch of the Baptist tree, bracket those thoughts and read this book. Jeffrey will not disappoint.

—Curtis W. Freeman, Research Professor of Theology and Director of the Baptist House of Studies, Duke University Divinity School

David Lyle Jeffrey is a consummate storyteller. His witty account of Baptist life in rural Ontario in the 1940s and ’50s takes readers back to a world far simpler and more innocent than our own. Jeffrey vividly recaptures for readers the staples of old-time Baptists: from Word-based preaching, theologically rich hymns, and gripping Protestant hagiographies to routine sword drills and lackluster handbell choirs. Jeffrey skillfully weaves his family history, with its delights and disasters, into a rich cultural and religious history of this ‘peculiar people’ in the Canadian countryside. At once memoir, history, and entreaty, this entertaining and gripping volume is a lesson in striving for a life of true holiness.

—Holly Faith Nelson, Professor of English, Trinity Western University

Jeffrey’s book is a treasure, full of stories and reflections that are at once wise, funny, and poignant. More than a spiritual memoir, however, it is an encouragement to become more aware and grateful for all those ‘peculiar people’ who, in big and small ways, shape our own stories of coming to faith. These are the kind of stories and vision that the church needs to remember and proclaim for its future.

—Darin H. Davis, Director, Institute for Faith and Learning, Baylor University

Perspective, lament, gratitude, humor, hope—all these are here in this wonderful memoir by David Lyle Jeffrey. Step back into the world of bygone Baptists who, for all their quaintness, still speak gospel truth into our own fragile world. A delightful read!

—Timothy George, Distinguished Professor of Divinity, Beeson Divinity School

We Were a Peculiar People Once

Confessions of an Old-Time Baptist

David Lyle Jeffrey

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© 2023 by 1845 Books, an imprint of Baylor University Press

Waco, Texas 76798

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission in writing of Baylor University Press.

Cover and book design by Kasey McBeath

Cover art: Unsplash/Colin Maynard

The Library of Congress has cataloged this book under hardcover ISBN 978-1-4813-1876-1.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023932019

978-1-4813-1878-5 (ePub)

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For those old-time Baptists—rough diamonds perhaps, but still shining for a’that

Contents

Preface: The Way We Were

1. The Sabbath

2. Outhouse Theology

3. Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting

4. Baptism

5. The Missionary Conference

6. Churchy Expletives

7. Youth Groups and the New Music

8. Sin

9. Salvation

10. Grace

11. Grave Matters

12. Gratitude

13. A Reckoning

Appendix: The Necessity of Biblical Language

Notes

Preface

The Way We Were

In ways that will become obvious, this little book is shaped by nostalgia, even lament. Its object, nonetheless, is more than mere recollection of a nearly vanished variety of Christian culture; my abiding gratitude for the inestimable gifts of the old-time Baptist tradition in which I was raised has been motive for all of it, even as I reflect on events and customs which are likely now to seem esoteric or quaint and occasionally, I admit, even comical. Rural Canada in the 1940s and ’50s can itself seem almost as far away and uninhabitable as the moon when viewed from the distance of postmodern urban America. For the reader who may be inclined to remain at a distance, even imaginatively, I have considerable sympathy. At the same time, in the interest of cultural diversity, in particular of religious diversity within the Christian and Baptist world, I would like to invite you to a crosscultural experience. For an analogue, imagine yourself cleaning your garage or attic and finding a box of National Geographic magazines from the mid-twentieth century and, unexpectedly entranced, spending a couple of hours reading the stories and perusing the images, marveling that the relatively recent past can now seem so foreign.

You might object that Baptist religious culture seems pretty generic in its ethos—distinct from that of Episcopalians, Catholics, or Presbyterians, maybe, but beyond that essentially homogenous. That is a little like what I expected when I moved to Texas two decades ago to teach in a Baptist university. I could hardly have been more off-base, as a genial Baptist pastor made it his business to inform me a few years later. You might have been raised Baptist up there in Yankee country where you come from, he said, but you don’t know anything about Texas Baptists.

I ceded the point.

Down here, he said, a Baptist can be anything from a snake handler to a Unitarian.

I laughed, but it was counsel I could have used five years before I got it. I’m not sure that is the whole spectrum, in fact, but if the Scottish Baptists of my childhood fall anywhere in a graph between those two poles, I haven’t found the spot yet. Maybe some better-informed reader will be able to help. One other moment of intra-Baptist recognition is perhaps closer still to my wanting to reflect on a now old-fashioned Baptist tradition, if nothing else than just to read it more charitably and to note its virtues, traces of what now might be called fundamentalism notwithstanding. I was having lunch with a colleague from Baylor’s Religion Department one spring day in 2002 when he announced his purpose in wanting to have lunch. He strongly urged upon me that if I wanted to extend my political support as an administrator I should become a Mason, preferably Scottish Rite. Nothing could have surprised me more at the time. I pointed out that for Baptists in Canada Masonic membership was on the list of things Baptists just did not do—it was one of the marks that we shared with Roman Catholics. The conversation went on, and my lunch partner strongly suggested that cultural connections were very important in Texas, and that as a foreigner I should make more effort to identify with the culture. I smiled and remarked how odd that seemed; to be Baptist when I was young meant that one was called to be countercultural. He snorted: "Here Baptists are certainly not countercultural. We are the culture. I have given his assertion much thought over the years, and it seems to me not only that he was mostly right, but that the reality he identified had shaped the minds of many of our students in ways that were not particularly helpful to them or promising for the future of Baptist life. I am still processing that conversation, as the following pages will doubtless show. Except in the degree to which I am disposed to regard Scripture itself as more authoritative than Christian tradition (to the study of which nevertheless I have devoted my life), and still believe that God hears and answers prayer, I am not, as my colleague preferred to believe, a fundamentalist. Neither am I a theological liberal or progressivist, or I would have no reason for writing a book in which I am asking myself, really, What is the good to which I am indebted? And why is it that much of that good seems to have been lost?"

Subsequent to my formative years I learned that there are many varieties of Baptist, both in Canada and the United States, many of which have a great deal in common with each other. The groups are for the most part small, but any list of them would be long: Free Will Baptists, Primitive Baptists, Slavic Baptists, Landmark Baptists, Old-time Regular Baptists, Sovereign Grace Baptists, Independent Baptists, Missionary Baptists, Bible Fellowship Baptists, and many, many more. They have differences, of course, but they tend to share one characteristic that isn’t so much doctrinal, at least not in the formal sense, but sociological: these smaller churches owe their historical existence to the willingness to be marginalized rather than give up their convictions. Right or wrong, they have heard the biblical call to come out from among them and be separate (Isa 52:11; 2 Cor 6:17) and applied it to themselves with considerable alacrity. Though many of these groups, including the church of my youth, have faded into obscurity or come under the wing of less austere ecclesial auspices, those that remain have continued to resist the general cultural imperative to be cool and blend in. To many Christians (not just Baptists), failure to blend in or adapt to general cultural norms has seemed likely to render them hors de combat, effectively irrelevant to Christian life and witness in today’s world. This is understandable. For many, their memory of such associations in their past, let alone the marginal existence of such Baptists in the present, creates embarrassment such as teenagers feel when their parents seem out of step with the world they are trying so hard to gain acceptance in; it is natural in such a situation to be anxious about mistaking where the herd is moving. Nevertheless, for others of us the old-time Baptist churches are the world of our parents and grandparents, for whom we retain considerable admiration as well as gratitude. Sure, the times were different and the customs and styles are now passé. But are we sure, even as our general culture seems to wobble on its foundations, that our forebearers have nothing to contribute to our spiritual and communal lives? Recollection of them brings to mind colorful individuals, people not mistaken for anybody else—real characters as we used to say with a chuckle—but also respect. Might some reflection on the life and worship of old-time Baptists, warts and all, be an appropriate part of honoring our parents in the biblical sense? I want to suggest so in these pages.

I am obliged to offer two other caveats concerning my purposes here. The first is academic: I have attempted here neither a history nor a taxonomy of belief and practices for Scottish Baptists, even for those wry and resourceful émigrés and their descendants who lived out their faith and practice of religious dissent in the rural Ottawa Valley of my younger years.

Second, let me warn my readers: I have not tried to sanitize or bowdlerize my memories of those folk. Indeed, I should confess to a peculiar warp in my own remembery, as one of my many cousins has called it. My most characteristic memory defect is that I tend to retain the weirdness in events that better folks seem to repress. In polite conversation about, say, a family wedding of several decades ago, it’s not the color of bridesmaids’ dresses or who caught the bouquet that comes to my mind. Rather, I recall a vivid image of the groom stepping in some dog dirt as photographs were being taken near the river, and of his regarding with horror the organic accretion to his fancy rented shoes, not to mention the odor, and loudly proclaiming a literal description of this excrescence using a non-Baptist noun. Similarly, while I seem to forget many dignified conversations that I would like to recall, I have a weirdly flypaper-like retention of moments of verbal embarrassment. High oratorical graduation speeches (including the ones I have given), wedding sermons, etc., all escape me now. I apologize, but there seems to be little I can do now to redeem my internal edit function—it operates quite independently of my will.

I realize that both these defects might lead a reader initially to think that I am not, especially in these early chapters, being entirely serious. Nothing could be further from the truth. My spiritual, intellectual, and theological formation began in earnest in the world I attempt to depict here, and for anyone who knows even a little about the preoccupations of my academic life in teaching and writing, there may, I hope, be some evidence that, having as a child been raised in the path my elders thought I should go, even in old age I have not departed from it. Well—at least not very much. From chapter eight on to the end I am very serious indeed.

Those who know that (despite my commitment to adult believer’s baptism) for more than forty years I have worshiped as a traditional Prayer Book Anglican may object. If being a Scottish Baptist seems now such a source of gratitude for me, why am I not a member now? The answer, alas, is that in the place of my birth they have nearly ceased to exist and here in the United States, despite throwbacks such as Alistair Begg of Parkside Church in Cleveland (to whose sermons I listen at least once a week), they are hardly to be found at all. What happened? you may ask. I will venture to say more about this in due course, but I have already hinted at it; the answer, briefly, is that like other Baptists/evangelicals, we gave up on