Bible Baptist Church of Savannah, GA

Bible Baptist days

In an earlier entry I wrote of how one day I walked down the aisle and accepted Jesus as my savior. (And that later clarity prevailed.) Longer than my salvation was my time at the Bible Baptist Church in Savannah, Georgia.

Pulpit pounding

Bible Baptist Church fulfilled every humanist’s fear of what conservative protestant fundamentalism can be like. Pastor Cecil Hodges was a pulpit thumper whose main style was denunciation. Doctor Hodges (some Baptist cow college gave him a freebie doctorate, all that most of the preachers who put doctor in front of their name have) regularly damned the Southern Baptist Convention for its liberalism SBC was on the conservative side of what passed as middle of the road back in the 1960s. A bunch of limp handshake Christians he said. Seemed like an odd indictment. I guess it meant they were manly enough to witness for Jesus. Even though I don’t enjoy shaking hands that left me with a firm grip.

Satan’s entertainment

He preached against going to movies. Even Disney movies, which had studied inoffensiveness back then. The logic? Well if you were a Christian and someone saw you in line to got to a movie, any movie, they’d think you were a hypocrite (because only sinners go to movies). Suppose that person was unsaved? Seeing you go to a movie might make them decide to never get right with the Lord and they’d go right down to Hell.

And dancing! Now there was sexual passion, lust in fundamentalese, run amok. Not that many people danced, possibly none of his congregation but you’d have thought there was a national dancing plague. Of course condemning something his flock didn’t do was an easy win. He was fond of repeating something J. Edgar Hoover said about dancing. Probably to the effect that it led to fun, I mean, immorality.

Once a woman came to church in a dress Doctor Hodges thought too short. He had the deacons take her newspapers to cover her legs with lest all the men folk lust after her in their hearts. (Do you know the Biblical injunction that women keep their heads covered in church? Some believe it was to keep the angles who were watching from being tempted.)

Church shenanigans

Some of the goings on were mildly funny but not the stuff good stories are made of. The church would be divided into Lambs and Lions. Each team was to bring visitors. The ones that brought the most were the winners. The prize was probably praise or maybe a nifty certificate suitable for framing. Pretty routine Rotarian booster crap.

Dr. Hodges was a go-getting Christian, an ex-business man who believed that God’s grace worked best with PR. He liked stunts.

One Sunday the church let off thousand of helium filled balloons with a note to visit the Bible Baptist Church attached. A sure fire way to win souls for the Lord.

One Easter he led a small parade as he drove a horse and buggy to the church. I never did discover exactly what Christian glory that embodied. Wonder what the three wise men used on the way.

There was a huge build up for the “World’s Tallest Preacher.” I think he was 7’10”. I guess it put him a little nearer to God than the rest of us. That one really packed Bible Baptist’s main room.

Lester Maddox

But the supreme stunt during the years of my enforced attendance was ex-Governor Lester Maddox coming to preach a sermon. Maddox was an ignoramus whose original fame came from his reaction to the Civil Rights Act. The act, dating from the period when African-Americans had to drink from their own water fountain, required restaurant owners to seat and to serve Negroes. Maddox had chased out the black people who entered with an axe. Shortly thereafter Maddox was elected Governor of Georgia.

Credulous flock grows

When I was foolish enough to first go to Bible Baptist and get saved the church was small and dumpy. The services were held in a little brick building with purple windows. Sunday school classes took place in an old wooden structure next door. Within a few years it expanded into a large complex that included a kindergarten through 12th grade school and a fleet of buses. The logistics of running the bus fleet were complicated enough for them to have a full-time Minister of Transportation (all church executives had complete training as preachers). Bible Baptist Church was featured in a book on the ten fastest growing churches in America.

Tired of Jesus

One of the happiest things about leaving home was that I did not have to go sit among the godly. Almost every service you had to shake the hands of the faithful surrounding you. Given my strong sense of privacy that seemed disgusting.

Equally it was a relief to not have to pretend that I though a scrapheap of tribal folklore and ancient legends was a description of reality. I didn’t have the nerve to tell my father that when I was living at home. Especially when I was a minor. There’d already been talk of sending me to Bob Jones University (the place John McCain attacked Bush for speaking at). He could’ve easily put me in some sort of Christian brainwashing camp. Putting on the suit and tie twice every Sunday and going to Sunday school, morning and evening service was a drag.

During revival time we might go for all five weekly services. The revivalists could be pretty entertaining. Their goal was to scare you into salvation. The drew heavily on nutty colorful prophecies in The Book of Revelation. The best was Jack Van Impe. He’d read and reread the Bible so many times, constantly trying to tie its words in with every newspaper and magazine that he read. He made the zaniest correlations. Once my father made me listen to one of Dr. Van Impe’s records. Most of it was about the Antichrist, soon to be coming from the Soviet Union and the always around the corner return of Jesus. He and his lovely wife Rexella (all Christian wives are lovely, 11th commandment) have a TV show. He’s always good for at least 15 minutes of chuckles, recommended Christian viewing.

The Bible Baptist Church later became a charter member of Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority (Now mostly forgotten, possibly the original begetter of the contemporary Christian hate organizations). I haven’t heard of the church in a blessedly long time. While I’m sure the faces are different they are most likely slapping each other on the back for being above ‘the world’ as they call the rest of us. The born again think that makes them very brave and daring. Despite their political power they fancy themselves an abused minority. I’ve sometimes wondered if the displacement of Goldwater urbanity by Limbaugh foul mouthedness wasn’t partly occasioned by the increasing role of the saved in the Republican Party.

Digression: North Carolina Christian radio

This is a good as any place to tell you about WWMO. It was possibly still is a fundamentalist radio station. I never listen to the radio but must’ve been curious when I moved to North Carolina. I remember two outstanding programs.

I don’t know if the first one even had a name. Possibly it did in an unknown tongue. The host would spend 15 minutes twice a week speaking in unknown tongues. It was odder coming from a stereo speaker than it had been in person. If you haven’t been lucky enough to attend a Pentecostal church you can get the effect by speaking nonsense syllables while trying to gurgle and yodel at the same time.

The other show, Teen Time, was ghastly. The young host would gloat about how happy he was that his parents beat him. If he ever lost his faith I hope he was lucky enough to find a nice, stern Mistress.

Baptist pests and former Baptists write me

An email from late 2002:

Pastor Hodges isn’t very tall. He is only about 6’0” tall. He of course is no longer the pastor, Pastor Hubbard is. But on time during a service with Pastor Hodges he stopped the service directly in the middle and had a man with hair to his shoulders escorted out of the building because he felt that man was unholy. Don’t unholy people go to church to find God? Another time he made all of the teen guys put bandages on their ears if they had earrings in or take them out b/c that was unholy. I could go on and on about some of the things he has done that were unbelievable.

Since the original version of this went up I’ve seen about one email a month come in. A few have been from people like myself were glad to be away from superstitious born-again buncombe. Most of it comes from the indignant fans of fundy Jesusolatry. I’m warned that I’m going to Hell. Or badgered to get right with God so I can go to Heaven like my correspondent.

Nothing can shut up the yammering ignorant. But unless it is so stupid as to be funny the only thing I’ll do with Christian comments on this entry is delete them. Vamping me for Jesus is a waste of time.