[Granville-Hough] 7 Jul 2009 - Church Democracy
Trustees for Granville W. Hough
gwhough at oakapple.net
Wed Oct 20 06:03:51 PDT 2010
We stand corrected on yesterday's poem about the crabby old man. It is a
remarkable poem by a living author whose work was appropriated by
others. Thank you, Terry Lynn, for bringing us up to date.
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Problems in Church Democracy.
One can read between the lines and see
that there were sometimes problems with the administration of punishment
for transgressions in the Zion Hill Baptist Church. Transgressions
included such things as dancing or plays in ones home. Of course
drunkeness and loud swearing were transgressions which were even more
serious, even if done in ones own home. Fornication was downright
serious in any environment, but no males were found guilty or suffered
church punishment. In Aug 1865, Zion Hill Church instructed its
delegates to the County Association to seek answers to serious
questions. The young men members had just returned from their service in
the Confederate Army, and they were not tolerant of any discipline of
their personal conduct. One specific question for the County Association
was: Is it gospel order where there are charges against church members
for misconduct for one accused to move and another (accused) to second
to have the charges thrown out, male or female? (One can picture
hard-bitten Confederate veterans, accustomed to swearing to high heaven
over the most trivial events, being disciplined by the staid old elders
of the church. Well, if you were brought up for confession, just bring
along several of your buddies and outmotion and outvote the old guys.
There are different ways to skin a cat, and outvoting the elders is less
humiliating than confessions of guilt and abject pleas for tolerance.)
There was no record of any answer from the County Association. Likely,
every congregation was facing the same problems. So Zion Hill was
allowed to struggle to find its own answers. Some decisions followed the
will of the majority; but they plainly did not follow the will of God.
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