[Granville-Hough] 21 Jan 2009 - Baptism

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

This reminds me of my favorite Baptist story:


A city slicker asking a backwoodsman if he believed in infant baptism.    
The backwoodsman replied "Believe it?   Hell, I've seen it DONE!"


Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2009 17:13:09 -0800
From: Granville W Hough <gwhough at oakapple.net>
Subject: 21 Jan 2009 - Baptism


TO BE OR NOT TO BE - A BAPTIST.

(Reference: pp 351-353, Granville W. Hough, Tales of Our People,
self-published, (out of print), 1989, revised 4 Jul 2005.)

To become a Baptist, you must be immersed completely in water so that
when you rise from the depths, all the old life will have been swept
away. From that moment on, you are on your own one-to-one relationship
with God, with no need for priests, bishops, or for that matter, any
other hireling ministers of the Gospel. Baptists cling to the ceremony
of immersion as a central experience of their persuasion; and today,
Baptist congregations which have begun to accept other forms of baptism
are suspect and called to account for their deviation. This calls to
mind some observations about immersion in the Baptist community of my youth.
Concord Baptist Church was founded in 1853 in Smith County, MS, by
settlers from Georgia. They formed a county line community on the line
of Smith and Simpson counties in the Southwest corner of Smith County.
As the church house was in Smith County, the community became part of
the Smith County Association. It was also a ridgeline community in the
Piney Woods, where the water flowed away in all directions into
different creek or river basins. It was three to five miles to a stream
deep enough to hold a proper baptizing. Worse yet, the adjacent
communities both east and west, were Presbyterian, and no one wanted to
borrow a Presbyterian creek for what the Presbyterians considered to be
a superflous dunking ceremony. So Concord got along as best it could,
going by foot, horse, and buggy sometimes five to ten miles to get to a
Baptist creek deep enough to sustain immersion. Maybe this added more
significance to the experience; at least things continued this way for
75 years.

My father, Elisha Hough, was a very pragmatic man who went along with
this baptism approach for several years after he moved to this
community. He did observe that the church spring, from under the hill
where the church stood, carried quite a bit of water. In fact, the
spring was one of several which formed, within a mile or so, Clear
Creek, which meandered through the woods about 7 miles before it joined
Cohay Creek just below Mize. Elisha suggested to the other deacons that
they build a baptistry near the spring, then install a pump in the
spring for filling the baptistry, and make it possible to immerse
converts with less difficulty.

Some of the other deacons demurred with the suggestion that the
baptistry would not be ôrunning waterö and that Jesus Christ was
baptized in the River Jordan in live, ôrunning water.ö My father noted
that the water from the church spring formed part of the running creek
water miles away where baptisms were frequently held; further, that he
would like to have everyone baptized in the River Jordan in the very
place that Christ was baptized, but this was hardly feasible. The
discussion over ôlive, running waterö became quite heated and some never
fully accepted the baptistry which my father and others built. They,
perhaps, preferred the picnic-like outings into the next communityÆs
fields and creeks to the rather hard, monotonous work of pumping the
baptistry full of water. My father, having made the baptistry
suggestion, of course became the custodian of the pump and piping.
The business meetings of the church were held on Saturday, never on
Sunday, following the injunction of ôRemember the Sabbath day, and keep
it holy.ö

(Business meetings were the times for settling arguments between members
and families, for censuring those who had deviated, and for even
expelling the unrepentant. Voices could become so raised that one would
forget being in the church house and keeping the events holy.) If there
was to be a baptism the next day, the meeting would appoint a committee
to see that the baptistry was filled. It generally took the committee
all that afternoon and part of the following Sunday morning to fill the
baptistry.

After church service the congregation would go down the hill to the
baptistry for the baptism. After a song and prayer the minister and the
convert would climb over crude steps into the baptistry. They waited
until the last moment, for no one (not my father or anyone else)
realized how COLD that spring water would be, coming directly from under
the hill. It was always the same, summer and winter, COLD, COLD, COLD.
Immersion in this baptistry was an unforgettable physical as well as
emotional experience. But I did not experience the cold dunking, though
I did help with the pumping several times. I went over at age 16 into
Simpson County where Brother Dan Moulder preached and he baptized me
into the warm running water of Goodwater Creek.

I did not forget the distinction about running water. In 1983, I asked
my cousin, Rev. Coley Arender, who spent his life in West Texas
Associations, how the people there coped with immersion when water was
scarce. ôOh,ö he said, ônearly all the towns have water systems and
reservoirs, and no one ever mentions the necessity for running water.ö
Then I asked, ôHow about the country churches which are miles away from
towns?ö He said, ôWell, IÆve baptized people in stock ponds pumped full
of water by windmills. IÆve even sprinkled people temporarily. Then we
would do a proper immersion when the rains came.ö So practicing Baptist
ministers in dry areas have to make do, and, presumably, nobody goes to
Hell because there is a shortage of water during a drought.
So what do we know about baptism? It isnÆt the River Jordan which
counts. It isnÆt running water. It isnÆt even immersion. ItÆs an
entirely non-physical, spiritual experience which makes the difference
in oneÆs life. I suspect God makes more notes on the difference in oneÆs
life than on the amount or the liveliness of the water used to baptize.