CHRIST IN WINTER:
Reflections on Faith for the Years of Winter
“You can’t vote for Birch
Bayh and be a Christian.”
That’s exactly what the
Baptist preacher in Francisco, IN told his congregation one morning. One very
old lady got up and walked out. She never went back.
“I was a member there for
seventy years,” she later told an old friend, my mother. “I got saved at a
revival meeting at that church and was baptized there when I was twelve. I
taught Sunday School for over fifty years. I worked in the kitchen every time
there was a meal of any kind. My husband and I tithed, and he helped build that
new building they worship in. That church was my life. I didn’t leave my church.
The church left me.”
This was quite a few years
ago. I’m not even sure which Birch Bayh was running for what office then. I
think of it now, though, because some Birch Bayh is running for some office in
Indiana, although he goes by Evan, almost his middle name, to distinguish him
from his distinguished father. [1]
I’m sure there are
preachers who are going to repeat this year what that Francisco preacher said
back then. I’m afraid, though, that there will not be many parishioners who
will walk out.
I recall a story from the
early days of the Nazi regime in Germany. One elderly man had gone out to his
flag pole each morning for years and years and hoisted the German Imperial
flag. When the Nazis came to power, they decreed that no flag but the swastika
could hence be flown. The old man went out into his yard and chopped down his
flag pole.
You’re never too old to be
faithful, and if the church leaves you, in order to be a Christian, the
faithful thing to do is to leave the church.
JRMcF
I tweet as yooper1721.
1] Evan Bayh’s real middle
name is Evans. He is Birch Evans Bayh III.
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