CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter
When I dropped out of high school in my senior year to work in the Potter & Brumfield factory, in the county seat, Princeton, 12 miles away, I assumed that if I went to college, it would be in my hometown, Oakland City College [Now a university]. I could go there part-time, maybe even full-time if I worked the night shift at the factory. I knew that even though it was a small college, you could get a good education there. Almost all my teachers had gone there, and they were smart enough. [1]
The General Baptist theology of OCC would have been in line with my Methodist affiliation, for both believed in “general” atonement, usually called “free will.” We weren’t predestined for heaven or hell; how we lived in this life determined where we would be in the next.
That stuff really meant nothing to the teen me, though. I was just an amorphous Christian in those days. Serious, but not really educated in the faith. Being Christian meant treating others as you wanted to be treated, and going to church, and avoiding serious sins, like smoking cigarettes.
OCC was [and is] the only college of The General Baptist denomination. In my high school days, it was a very small denomination, only about thirty thousand people, mostly in little churches in small towns in southwestern Indiana, a few in Tennessee, and… in Guam.
Exactly how Guam came into the General Baptist universe I don’t know. Maybe soldiers from Oakland City in WWII? Anyway, the GBs were very proud of being a missional church, all the way to Guam… until Angelo Flores Sablan came to Oakland City to attend OCC. Then there was a problem.
He wasn’t white. What did you let a Guamanian into, and how far? Could he live in the dorm? Have a white roommate? Eat in the cafeteria with everybody else? What if he wanted to hold hands with a white girl? [Holding hands was as far as GBs were supposed to go.] Worse, what if a white girl were willing to hold hands with him?
If he were a Negro, it would be simple enough. He would sleep in the furnace room, eat in the kitchen, sweep up the concert hall after a minstrel show. If he even looked at a white girl, you’d ride him out of town on a rail. Regular stuff of the day. Simple rules for stratifying and satisfying people.
But Angelo wasn’t a Negro. His skin wasn’t even very dark. Besides, he was a General Baptist, so he had to be treated… how? There were no readily available categories to use to discriminate against him. But everybody knew he had to be treated differently some way or another, because… well, he was different! Yes, “general” in “General” Baptist meant Jesus had died for him, too, but… he wasn’t white!
To their credit, the college and the town reacted in a noble way, a traditional Christian way, by talking about it a lot and doing nothing about it at all. Angelo probably thought we were all nice Christian folks who accepted him gladly, instead of confirmed racists who were befuddled by what to do about one who is our own… but different.
I looked Angelo up on the internet. He died in 2011, in Florida. His funeral was at a Baptist church. I’m sure he went to heaven, because the “general” in General Baptist means Christ died in general, for everybody.
John Robert McFarland
1] I learned many years
later that I could have had a scholarship to OCC, too. Homer Heathman, our
neighbor on the next farm, up the hill, had given money to the college at a
time when it was in financial straits. In return, they had put aside two
scholarships for him to give. His grandson told me that Homer had saved one for
me, but he didn’t tell me, because he wanted me to be able to make up my own
mind about where I wanted to go to college without feeling undue pressure from
him. He was a good neighbor, and did many good things for me and my family. One
of the best things he did for me was something he didn’t do, for had I not gone
to IU, I would not have met Helen, and…
Unthinkable!
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