I grew up in the Baptist denomination. The Baptists are non-creedal, and believe very strongly in the importance of the independence of the local congregation. I tend to agree with these matters of Baptist polity, although that may simply be my own antipathy towards giving anyone else permission to tell me what to do. Evangelical denominations also tend to be anti-intellectual, and the Baptists tend to take this to extremes. Given my subsequent career as a researcher, author, and semi, or possibly failed, academic, I find the anti-intellectualism a little embarrassing.
Starting somewhat before Fiona died, I began to try to study my faith more rigorously. It was at this point that the anti-intellectualism became rather annoying. I tried to talk to various people in our church, and find out what made Baptists Baptists. I would ask, for example, who was the first Baptist? The answer that I generally got was "John the Baptist." Since I already knew that most of the Christian church had been Catholic for most of its history I knew that this was arrant nonsense. But I couldn't really get a straight answer out of anybody in the church. I had to do my own research and my own exploration without much assistance from anyone around me. I do find it somewhat strange that I maintained my belief during this period rather than giving it up as so many people of my age did. I possibly have the books of C. S. Lewis to thank for that.
There is, or was, a conference on missions, run out of Urbana, Illinois, which many young people attended. I didn't, but one of my friends did while I was in university. I vividly recall the poster sized application form for this conference. One side asked for all kinds of personal information about you. The other side of the form had one question: denomination (specify). Then it listed column after column of denominations, and lists of sub-denominations. My friends and I counted, and the Baptists and Mennonites were tied, with twenty sub-denominations each. But the Baptist had one that the Mennonites didn't: "Other (specify)." I think we can take it as a given that the Baptists are the most schismatic denomination of all Christian denominations.
I am a Baptist Metis. A half breed. A hybrid. My father belonged to the Regular Baptists, and my mother to the Convention Baptists. This is a particularly British Columbian split in the church. It resulted from the liberalist/fundamentalist split in the North American church more broadly. But it also resulted from a pioneer in Vancouver, one John Morton, one of the "three green horns" of Vancouver, who, when he died, a fairly wealthy man by that time, in his will left his money to "the regular Baptist Church." This reference in the will was probably simply meant to refer to the most common Baptist Church at the time, which was the BC area of what eventually became the Baptist Union of Western Canada. The BC area conducted a convention every year, and were known as convention Baptists. But there were other Baptist denominations operating in British Columbia. There is a denomination which, while being known as North American Baptists, actually had Germanic roots. When I started to do some research on the various denominations operating in BC, during my teens and twenties, the highest number of churches were actually Southern Baptist churches. They are Southern Baptists, since they originated in the southern states of the United States. They operate the highest number of churches, since most of their churches are very tiny missions. But, in any case, a fundamentalist wing of the convention Baptists, during the 1920s when John Morton died, took advantage of the wording of the will to break away from the convention, and style themselves the Regular Baptists. This, of course, resulted in a lawsuit over the wording of John Morton's will, which resulted in a quarter of the money being given to the Convention Baptists, a quarter of the money being given to the Regular Baptists, and half the money going to lawyers.
There were, of course, still plenty of fundamentalists within the convention Baptists, and it was some of these, in our church, who gave my parents a hard time over Fiona's death. Sometime later, while still performing my research and explorations of my own faith, I identified at least one of the people who was in this party. I was interviewing various leaders in our church, and asking them general questions about Christianity and faith. This one person started to get into this idea that, if anything bad happened to you, it was because you didn't have enough faith. He even got quite specific about any deaths. Sickness and death, he maintained, we're simply because you didn't have enough faith. He then realized who he was talking to. His face got a funny look, and he started doing all kinds of verbal contortions trying to point out that my sister's death was an exception and this general standard did not apply in my case. I must admit that, while I didn't react to any of this, I did take quite unholy mental glee in his difficulties at this point.
Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/11/mgg-1b1-memoirs-of-grieving-gnome-fiona.html
Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html
Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/01/mgg-1b3-memoirs-of-grieving-gnome.html
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