An American Harvest Page 4
I think Papa’s idea was to broaden religion and to work more with other people. He seemed to want us to see there was no real difference between Methodists and Moravians and Baptists; I think it was more for this reason than for his Fundamentalism that we went to other churches and to so many of them.
JOHN:
I think perhaps you’re idealizing his restlessness a bit.
KENNETH:
You know, John, you seem to be real bothered by this. I never thought much about it, I mean, the churches. They were there and we went to them, and we enjoyed the people who went to them. I never felt I was either free or hemmed in; this was just the way life was.
RALPH:
I agree largely with Blanche, I don’t think our father was Fundamentalist at all. I think he was a character quite different from most people in our community. He didn’t run the farm too well, but he continually looked forward to better education, better roads, and things of that sort.
If I was surprised at anything as a child it was at the times when I didn’t get scolded for something I thought a Fundamentalist would scold me for. He didn’t make out that we’d go to Hell or the “booger man” would get us if we didn’t do right by his sights.
ARTHUR:
You know, speaking of Fundamentalism, those Revival meetings Luther mentioned in his diary tried to instill such doctrines. I brought something I’d written long ago concerning my impressions of a particular revival meeting I attended when I was about fourteen. I wrote it some years after that, when I was at the University, in fact, but the recollection seemed fresh in my mind at the time.
REVIVAL MEETING
It was on a very warm day in August that I saw the buggies and carriages and pedestrians of the community gathering to the church. Those God-fearing men left their growing crops and growing grass to the care of no one; those women who rear children and bake pies and bread and cook beans also left their work undone, and all went to the church.
The regular minister of the church had a visiting minister to conduct the services. The regular minister would lead all the opening parts of the services. The visiting minister would sit behind the pulpit until time for him to deliver the sermon. This was the procedure of these meetings. When the meeting was about to end there was generally a proposition made. I did then hate those propositions. I couldn’t understand them, and I was compelled through circumstances to respond to the proposition. (A proposition is a call to the altar to make a commitment to Christ.)
These meetings were held at ten o’clock and again at the eight o’clock, evening hour. The day meeting was chiefly for the saved; the night service was for those who were unsaved in the community. The meetings had begun on Sunday; no propositions were made at the earlier meetings; I enjoyed them very much.
The Monday morning meeting was a kind of preparatory meeting. The regular preacher told of the blessings the people, as Christians, should enjoy and also the convictions that the unsaved in the community should experience. With such preliminary remarks and a few hymns and a very long and earnest prayer offered by a very old and sincere man, the visiting minister opened the Bible and began to read from that blessed book.
He read very much, and there was some connection between the passages read. He exhorted the people to get on the Lord’s side. He told of God’s great plan of salvation. He showed in what way man was evil and condemned except through the death of Christ upon a cruel, heavy, hilltop-planted cross; how God’s plan of salvation must be met if people are really glad and happy in Christ. After showing that man was condemned and had to be redeemed by Christ, he beckoned all those who wanted a real revival in the community to stand up. Everybody stood up.
I stood up. I really wanted to have a revival. I felt that I needed aid. I felt that I was weak. I honestly meant what I said when I stood up. I wanted all people to be revived, me along with the group. Service was over at 12:45 P.M., and very soon each father and mother and child was making way towards a pot of well-cooked beans and roasting ears of corn.
The community had been blessed by that meeting. I felt good as I went down the hill by the tobacco barns and reached home, still thinking of that fine sermon and the noble desires expressed by all the folks there—an entire community desiring the same thing. Well surely a revival must come.
The people, by milking and feeding a little earlier than commonly, were assembled at the night service. The regular preacher took but very little part that night. The visiting minister took charge of the songs. He prayed a prayer of fineness. He asked God to open the hearts of any and all unsaved who might be there. He prayed that they might see the true light and turn and line as God would have them line. I enjoyed that prayer. It did me good. I never have said “Amen” in a service, but I did feel “Amen” all over.
The sermon was fine. He explained how God has a purpose for each of us to fill when he created us. We were all created for some service to God and man. He likened the Creator of men to a bricklayer who lays good each brick in the wall to support those above it. God created each of us pure and innocent and fine and holy. The bricks were all created perfect. But the bad ones are you and me. We may have become faulty.
Now if a bad stone is in the wall, the wall is made less strong by this bad stone. How can you want there to be bad stones in a wall? How can you refuse to help your fellow man? We should be good bricks in God’s temple. I have a place to fill. How will it be filled? The preacher came down from behind the pulpit and said: “All those who really want to be a good stone in this wall of God, stand up.” The entire group stood up, sinners and all.
Everybody wanted to be a real man and woman and fill their place well. The last song was sung, the benediction pronounced by the regular preacher. The people all went home really praying that they might be a good stone in the wall.
Tuesday came. Farmers and farmers’ wives worked hard until ten o’clock in order that they might go to church. When the people in the community had already or were about to arrive, the service began in fine style— good singing, good opening prayer offered by a sincere man. The visiting preacher opened the large bible and read slow and concise as usual.
The people heard of the calling of Abraham and the promises made to his seed. How God called Abraham and how Abraham had often chosen the poor pastures in order that he might keep the soul purer—how Isaac was saved because of Abraham’s obedience to God. At length he explained this well and in detail.
Then calling down he asked all that wanted to obey the call of God to come and shake hands with himself, the regular preacher, and each other before the altar. Everybody came. Everybody wanted to be a real servant of God—wanted to do His will, wanted to know and execute the will of God. The last song was sung. The Benediction said, and the people all went out to go home.
The night meeting was fine—the best of all. The preacher spoke of the feast of Belshazzar. He described at length and in vivid detail the drunkenness, debaucheries, the terrible hilarities of that lusty affair . . . I was left feeling, really feeling, that I neither would nor could be so foolish as Belshazzar—so foolish as to wallow in those depths of sinfulness before seeing the handwriting upon the way and realizing that I’d been “weighed in the balances and found wanting.”
The preacher said, “All who really want to be weighed before God and found fit, stand.” Everybody stood. I wanted to be weighed and found fit. The last song was sung. All went home. Belshazzar was to be pitied and hated. Most of all, his condition resulting from his situation was to be evaded.
The next day came. The sun shone very warm as I chopped grass—hateful, worthless, pestilential grass— away from the tender tobacco plants. The tobacco was set very late that year; the grass seemed to be determined to kill the tobacco plants. Poor, little, tender, pleasure-giving tobacco plants were about to be crushed out by the rapidly growing enemy of mankind: grass. When the hour of service came, I had, as the others, come.
The meeting began. The regular preacher told of the good
response made by the people at all the former services. The saved and unsaved people responded alike. Are there no differences? The people of God are a peculiar people. The people of God are not as the people of the world.
Now there was a certain man present at all of these meetings who had come a long distance and who, until this last meeting, said very little. He was a most profound believer in spiritual things; he had no faith in any worldly interpretation put upon life by worldly people. At this last meeting, the songs were sung and this visiting preacher offered the prayer. The prayer asked God to send the Holy Spirit into his life. He asked that the Holy Ghost be felt by all people there before going from God’s house. He asked that all people should be separate from and not contaminated with the world.
The man prayed long and loud. Many “Amens” were uttered that morning. I became less interested as the man continued his wordy prayer about Holy Ghost, Holy Spirit, worldliness, atonement, and Up Yonder. The prayer ended. The regular minister stood up on the platform and said that he felt sure the Holy Ghost would come. I saw people about me shedding tears. I saw old men tremble—others I saw asleep—I saw young girls look at each other. I felt miserable.
The sermon was very clear, I thought, and very impracticable,. The preacher told of how Peter raised the beggar to his feet. He then told how Peter walked upon the sea—he was held up by the Holy Ghost—he couldn’t sink. The minute Peter thought of himself, he began to sink. Man must be in the Holy Ghost area or he is lost. He explained it all. I was in a maze. I couldn’t see it all . . .
At the end of the service, the visiting Brother said a few words; I don’t remember what the words were but this is what he had said when he stopped: “This old world is a miserable place. I long to be far from this worldliness. Let us not think of worldly things. Let us think of spiritual things. Let us live as Thou wouldst have us live, then sever us from this world of trouble and tribulations and strife and pain and sin, and let us be with the angels on those shining crystal shores of eternity where the thief neither breaks through nor steals,” and so forth. He quit his prayer. I was glad. I felt miserable. I felt as though I didn’t know what it was all about.
The regular preacher stood up and with tears in his eyes asked all those who knew they would go to that City of God if they were to die today to stand up. I didn’t know I would go there. I didn’t know I would go elsewhere. I saw all the folks about me stand up. They rose slowly. I stood up too. I did stand up, proudly, because everybody else stood up. He then asked the people to sit down. I did with the rest.
The meeting was a worry to me. I had wanted a revival. I had wanted to be a sound brick. I had wanted to be fit to be weighed by God’s scales. I had desired all this, but now I had a part of the revival that I couldn’t use. Either I was out of line, or else there is more than one plan. I enjoyed the preliminary meetings fine, but when this real revival, as they called it, came, I couldn’t use it. It was neither what I wanted nor what I could enjoy when once I had gotten it. The real was unreal to me. The warming up period was real to me . . .
There’s a bit more here at the end, but I won’t go on. It’s at least enough to indicate my feelings about revival meetings at the time.
At this point, some of the younger children in the group lost interest and either fell asleep or started fussing. The whiners were removed and taken to another more engaging venue.
JOHN:
I didn’t get as caught up in those Revival meetings as you seem to have, Arthur. I didn’t get much out of them except a sense of relaxation and perhaps a bit of entertainment. I liked to go because it was a break from work, and almost any excuse to get away from the work for a while was worth it.
BLANCHE:
Well, it bothered me right much. The preacher would call first, “All who are sure you are saved and your sins have been forgiven, come forward to the altar.” If I went I felt like a hypocrite; if I stayed I thought everybody’d wonder what awful hidden sins I had that couldn’t be forgiven. Then we were also asked to go stand with the one who’d helped us the most in our religion. Of course I had to go stand with our parents or they’d feel bad. They forced you to be a hypocrite.
LUTHER:
I think I always answered the call, in my younger years. As Blanche suggests, it was easier to go than it was to stay home. I don’t remember feeling so pained about it though.
My folks, Methodists, attended church nearly every Sunday morning. Mom saw to it that Pop and we six children trooped in to fill the third pew from the front, 11 a.m. sharp.
Our minister, unlike the Rapers’ ministers, read the daily New York Times and tried to relate Christ’s teachings to everyday life—a hard task in the days of the Great Depression and World War II. In Sunday School we discussed Christian ethics, often reconciling ourselves that all Christ’s teachings could not possibly apply to the society in which we lived. Nonetheless teachings of the Golden Rule made its mark: we strived to treat others as we would want them to treat us.
I did then believe in Heaven, while not fully accepting the concept of Hell. Such beliefs began to wane when, further contemplating Heaven, I thought what a bore it would be to have no conflict, no strident disagreements, everyone pious. And what would you do up there anyway? Play harps all the time—forever and ever and ever?
By sophomore year in college, with teachings in cultural anthropology and comparative religions, belief in Heaven and a personified male God disappeared altogether. Now, as I listened to the Raper siblings, I came to realize that the strict religious dictates of that family’s childhood also waned, once they grew into adulthood—but the ethical teachings stayed.
LUTHER:
Arthur, do you recall ever going over to the Negro church for some of their meetings—the Holy Roller sect, I mean?
ARTHUR:
No, Papa discouraged it. He said that religion is to be taken seriously and that most of the white people who went there didn’t go for religious purposes—that was the Negro church near Jud Shutt’s place.
People came by the hundreds from Lexington and all around. The Revival meetings there were something of a show, I was told, with a lot of white people going there to ogle at what they saw: the enthusiastic singing, chanting, and shouting. I do recall, almost with awe, those fast horses with their buggies and carriages, as they came by Uncle Henry Wilson’s place and by the church. It was something of a show, for many of them ran their horses very fast, and some of them had very good outfits.
I remember especially nearly choking to death by the well at the Wilson place when a group of us boys stood there watching the Negroes go by, and someone (maybe me) called out, “Here comes another dark cloud” just as a Negro passed closer to us than we had expected. Here we were, face to face with a stranger, with this sort of careless talk in our mouths; and, as I say, I nearly choked to death—and maybe well enough that I did, for as you see, I still remember it.
LUTHER:
Well, I did go to their services once or twice with some of the other boys in the community. I confess it was quite an experience. They were right more demonstrative than we, jumping, chanting, wailing, rolling around. They’d have a regular dialogue with the preacher ‘til they’d end up shouting back and forth things I couldn’t rightly understand. I thought it wasn’t fittin’—that they were plumb out of their heads—but I kind of envied them just the same. They were so fully involved, physically, emotionally, and everything else.
RALPH:
I attended one or two of the Holy Roller services also, Luther, and I’ve wondered some whether that kind of service, had we been brought up to it, would have sustained our interests in Revival meetings a good bit more. Of course we couldn’t ever really participate in them. We were outsiders, and we weren’t ever used to so much emotionalism. Mama and Papa didn’t go for that kind of thing; it wasn’t in their backgrounds. It’s part, I guess, of the reason they never did argue, that I heard anyway, or carry on much about this, that, and the other thing. Never saw
’em hug each other and say sweet things to one another.
ARTHUR:
If I may, I will make some comments with reference to my estimate of Father’s religion. He was the first person I knew of whom I respected who said he didn’t believe in the Virgin Birth. He said that to me. I asked him about this, saying, “This business of a woman having a child all on her own is rather unusual isn’t it? How did this happen?” I remember saying also, “It’s interesting to me that rabbits lay eggs only at Easter and jolly fat men come down chimneys only at Christmas. This is sort of funny business, isn’t it?” He just said, “Well, there is a lot of other funny business too,” and he went ahead and told me some of it.
I know as he became older, John, he became less flexible—well, he had less energy—but when he was younger, I remember him talking to Sid Raper, a Methodist preacher, who was ranting on and on about the Modernists. Sid had everything figured out; now he was what I’d call a Fundamentalist.
They sat there at the dining room table one night until about eleven thirty, with Papa batting down most of Sid’s arguments about any religion matters that were mystical and other-worldly. Papa thought religion was ethically oriented and that everybody could profit from it in their everyday living. His religion in practice, I think, wasn’t too different from Grandfather Crouse’s.
It was in those earlier years that Dad first explained to me about providence. The fact is, until then, I didn’t even know there was anything like that. Thus it was: one frosty morning, just before daybreak, we were down in the Cool Spur woods on a rather steep slope loading some spokes on a two-horse wagon.