How I Became a Baptist

A year ago, I had never been in a Baptist church.  This Sunday, I will be “walking the aisle” to become a member of one – indeed, to become a Baptist.

Is becoming a Baptist the result of a personal transformation? 

Hopefully the answer is both “yes” and “no.”  Yes, my life has changed and I have transformed as an individual over the last year and the last several years.  But hopefully I’m not done.  May my transformation ever remain incomplete!  May I never stop growing. 

It is interesting for me to look back over the timeline of what brought me to this present day.  My memory has reversed the order of several of what I perceive to be watershed moments of the last couple years of my life.  The shaping of one’s life can rarely be attributed to a specific, solitary event – a single “aha!” moment.  Though there may (and hopefully will) be ahas along the way, it’s hard to imagine that most of us have that singular moment on which our lives hinge.  When we look at others’ lives, we may think that’s what we see, but even then, it’s probably an oversimplification of a complex process of growth.  (Perhaps our best example of having “the one moment” is Paul on the road to Damascus.  But if that event was so central to Paul’s development, why does he mention it only once, briefly, in his many letters?)

That said, I can certainly identify a number of influences in my recent life that have had substantial impact.

What stands out to me most was a book I read: Corrie Ten Boom’s The Hiding Place.  I read that book November 16, 2013.  It was one of the most powerfully moving reading experiences of my life, no doubt.  I was swept up by this woman whose story was so profound and heroic, yet she didn’t seem to attribute greatness to herself.  She was a Christian woman who was doing the right thing, nothing more, in her own estimation.  But in so doing, she was first able to save countless lives – mostly Jewish lives that would have been eliminated at the hands of the Nazis – and then brought to the brink of death herself in a concentration camp after her activities were discovered.  And yet, even in the face of an enemy so clearly defined, she never lost her heart of forgiveness.  Truly, hers was an outwardly-directed life that is a model of many of the virtues to which I sincerely aspire.

But looking back over the timeline, I see that another domino had already been tipped by that point.  A month prior, I had been driving from a client’s warehouse to the Kroc Center in Greenville to pick up my packet for a race.  In my car, I had on “Walter Edgar’s Journal,” the Friday noontime radio show on SC ETV Radio.  The show that day was a discussion of Year of Altruism, and featured an interview with my teacher and friend Rabbi Marc Wilson.  I had studied with Marc on and off for several years.  He used to host a weekly Torah study in his home on Monday nights (a class that continues to this day, though now in Greenfield’s Bagels).  For several years, Julie and I would go through periods of time when we would attend fairly regularly, and then fade away for a while (babysitter costs, etc.).  Anyhow, the Rabbi Wilson that I heard on the radio was hardly the man I had known for the last several years.  What I heard was a man with “fire in his belly” – a man who had been regenerated, given new life by the cause he had found.  I knew when I heard that radio show that I needed to get on board, to hitch my wagon to whatever train he was on.  He had found new verve for serving his community – my community, Greenville – and seemed to be organizing folks to uplift our community as a whole.  Year of Altruism was the outgrowth of the idea of commemorating Kristallnacht – that horrible and fateful night that ramped up what was to become the Holocaust -- not by dwelling on the suffering and loss that ensued, but rather by celebrating the “righteous gentiles” among the nations that acted without concern for their own lives in efforts to save lives of Jews. 

I knew that that radio show was a clear domino in leading me to try to become involved in Year of Altruism, which brought about MeetingPoint, the interfaith community-building effort with which I am currently involved.  In retrospect, since that radio show was 22 days prior to my reading The Hiding Place, it must have piqued my interest and primed me to be able to really understand the book as I was able to do.

And it was only a month before that that I was immersed in baptism.

When I was immersed, I didn’t sense it to be a particularly transforming experience.  It was, in my perception, primarily a formality.  As you can see from my prior blog entry which discusses my decision to be immersed (if you should wish to read it), I was immersed so that there would no longer be an obstacle between myself and my church. 

Perhaps you see the theme that runs through these three influential occasions in 2013: awakening my desire to actively participate in my community.

While my immersion itself didn’t awaken a new sense of religiosity in my life, it was a demonstration of a cornerstone element of religious involvement.  Organized religion is about community.  It is about coming together to do things we can’t do on our own.  It is about loving something and someone other than oneself.

On the face of it, it might seem strange.  I left one church home relatively soon after I was intentionally doubling down on my commitment to that very church body.  But it seems clear to me now that the desire to enrich my relationship with the church was part and parcel of the growth that has led me away from it.

See, our former church home, which our family still loves dearly, is far away.  For years, we were willing to make the fifty-mile drive to and from Clemson to remain connected to the church.  We visited a number of churches closer to home over the years, but never found a good fit.  We tried to be “semi-involved” with a couple of churches – participating in extracurricular activities with one while commuting to Clemson for Sunday worship – but we ended up being lukewarm in two places.

When we first began talking with friends about Earle Street Baptist Church in Greenville, it was perhaps with the desire for another lukewarm attempt.  Could we, maybe, just do Wednesdays at ESBC?  What time is early service on Sunday during busy season?  How about being part of the Earle Street basketball team or something?  Thankfully, we were somehow wise enough to know better this time around.  But what about “Baptist?”  Isn’t that, like, Jerry Falwell, and right-wing politics?  Don’t they just sing praise songs?  Aren’t they, kinda, mega-churchey?  Or maybe, are those the folks that talk about “gettin’ saved” and preach hell and brimstone?  It’s taken me long enough to fit in at any church, what with my Jewish-influenced practices and apolitical (or left-leaning) sensibilities.  How on earth  can I give that up to try to convince a new church family that I’m not a whacko, zealot, legalist, Judaizer? 

Buddhism is divided into two primary schools.  The older, more “fundamentalist,” school is known as Theravada.  The majority of Buddhists would fall into the other school, which is Mahayana.  The word “Mahayana” means, essentially, “great vehicle” – though it was taught to me, and is perhaps somewhat more intuitively understood, as “big raft.”  The concept is that there is room for a great diversity on the “big raft,” while the Theravada, the “way of the elders” is a Hinayana: a minibus.

What I have learned in the last year is just how big the “raft” of the Baptists is.  It is not narrowly defined.  There is room for diversity of opinion.  It can run the political gamut.  But in the end, a Baptist church is a collection of individuals – a congregation – and the congregation is the ultimate authority.  So, yes, some Baptist churches are probably very political, and sing praise songs with electric guitars and drums and maybe even a little light show, and emo teens swaying their heads to the beat.  Indeed, indeed – probably most Baptists churches would not be a very good fit for me and my family after all.  But “Baptist” is a big enough raft to include churches for many types of person and walk and worship style.  Even me & mine.  Because we are an assembly of people, we can – and do – take on the shape of our constituency: our community. 

When we first began attending ESBC, they were kicking off the current church year, where the theme is that they are a “church without walls.”  We sing, every week:

Make us a church without walls

Open to all

Sharing holy love with all the world

And forgive us when we hide

And hold your love inside

O Lord we hear the call

To be a church without walls!

How exciting, to keep the outward focus on our lips, week after week!  And it couldn’t have come at a better time in my life, ringing true to what is so important to me.

I am delighted to have found a church that I am willing and eager to now make my own.  In another year, in five years, Earle Street Baptist Church is going to have a little more Steven Rau feel about it.  We will shape each other as we work together.  May we work to serve others, and may we elevate our community in so doing.