Sign of the Times

A few nights ago was one those swampy, late summer, Louisiana evenings, one of those where you know you’re going to sweat through every article of clothing that you have on. I wanted to go to church and I tried to recruit a travel partner from within the household. They were having none of it, and, to be honest, I couldn’t blame them. Out of the kitchen window I could see a rooster tail of dust hovering in the thick air of the cattle pasture, the sure sign of a bush hog busy chopping down the waist high weeds. I looked out of the window in the girls’ room and caught the glimpse of a beat up pick-up truck outside of the old farm house across the field. I put on my Sunday best and headed that way.

As I made my way up the front steps, I was met by the smiling face of my grandfather sitting on the porch swing. “Where are you going to preach?” he asked. “No where,” I responded, and then asked if he would like to join me in visiting the old church up the hill. His smile got bigger. “He’s too feeble!” cried my mother from inside the farmhouse. “I ain’t either!” he yelled back. Somehow, from all the cleaning, she had managed to cover him in dust. I dusted him off and mom helped me get him down the stairs and loaded in the truck.

As we climbed the ridge, about a mile from the bottom where our farm sits, through the heat vapors you could begin to make out the brilliant white outline of the old Baptist church. Across the highway from the church sits an old cemetery and church camp. “That’s where I got saved,” he said, as he pointed to an old building on the campgrounds. I pulled into the parking lot next to the pastor’s truck that has a faded bumper sticker that reads 1-800-MY-SOUTH next to an image of a Virginia battle flag.

This parking lot was the same one where my uncle got in a knife fight in the 1930s. It is where I saw that same uncle being loaded in the back of a hearse to be buried across the street with our ancestors. The same parking lot where I was showered with rice, being hand in hand with my new bride.

By the time we had made it I through the church doors, I had already sweated through my white collared shirt and was working on soaking my khakis. I sat my grandfather down, relieved myself of my sportscoat, and stood next to the a/c vent.

My grandfather and I brought the total attendance to 10 heads and, not counting myself, I figured the average age to be 72 years old. Everyone was gathered in a room on the bottom floor, so as not to waste electricity in cooling the sanctuary. Their collective faces, puzzled at first, now lit up with new energy when they finally recognized my grandfather.

There was a joyous fellowship and more than a few memories shared. The pastor, who is 85, spoke about picking my great grandfather’s cotton when he was a boy for extra spending money. We talked about the time when Governor Jimmie Davis invited my grandmother’s gospel quartet to sing at the state capital. “He was our governor,” shouted Mr. Glen, a man hard of hearing in his 94th year. “He was one of us. He rode his horse clean up those capital steps,” someone else recalled. For those who don’t know, Jimmie Davis is a hero to many of us poor, white, evangelical Deep Southerners who inhabit the northern part of Louisiana. He was a two-term governor and country music star. His hit song, “You Are My Sunshine,” was one my grandmother used to sing me to sleep when I was a child.

The message was from the book of Acts and was short and sweet. Before the closing prayer, the pastor said, “Now, I want everyone to pray a special prayer for the nation of Israel. It was 1948 when our president, Harry Truman, worked to establish this nation and even England voted against it. The Bible says that God will judge every nation on whether they stand for Israel or against it. America is a nation that will be judged by it’s stance with Israel.” All the grey heads bobbed in agreement and prayer was said.

It was mentioned a few weeks ago, in an online conversation with another ethnic Southerner, that Southern men, raised in Fundamentalist Christian churches, need to have their “ethnic conscience” reawakened if they are going to have any agency in this “new age” of identity politics.  I agree completely with this assessment, although I know the challenge will be a difficult one. Difficult because in order to accomplish this task we must first reveal to our people the flaws that exists in their worldview. This is a worldview that has been colored largely by Dispensational Theology.

I’m not going to go in-depth on Dispensational epistemology, as it can get very convoluted and would take away from the primary point of this essay. It will help us, however, to be honest about what it is and what it is not. If we do this well, then it can be shown to be just another trend that worked its way into the Christian church for only two of the last 20 centuries. If we do not do this justice, we will cause a knee jerk reaction of resistance by some very good and valuable men, men who have a history of having their religion ridiculed by intellectuals and outsiders. This is a job best done by someone on the inside, someone who has grown up in this world.

First, DT (Dispensational Theology) does not take priority over the Gospel in any Fundamentalist church. It is only a way of reading the Bible. The straight forward Gospel message is the heart and soul of the Fundamentalist church. If you were to remove DT completely from it, you would only make it stronger and more able to take on the challenges that we face today. Second, its hayday is long past and it is not a worldview that is currently gaining strength.

“So, what about those old-timers who were sitting at church that Sunday night and praying for Israel?” you might be asking. “Let ’em pray,” I say. They are not the generation that I’m most troubled with. These people went from growing up on farms with no electricity or indoor plumbing, to seeing the hydrogen bomb and moon landing in one lifetime. How could you live through the twentieth century without thinking the world was coming to an end? If you had a seed of End Times theology planted in you during the Great Depression, then by the time you were able to watch John Hagee on your flat screen TV, you would expect the end to come any day.

When the “nation” of Israel was formed by the world’s governments on May 14, 1948, many fundamentalist Christians saw it as a sign of the “end times.” We know that biblical prophecy does not work that way. You cannot simply sit around the negotiating table and will God’s plan into existence. And, it’s highly likely that more than a few behind this political move knew just how to sell it to an evangelical nation. I, for one, am willing to cut my grandparents a little bit of slack.

“So, why are you going so easy on the octogenarians?” you ask. Well, they are my people and I love them. Second, it is what they have to offer us.

Spread all over the South are small little churches on the verge of shutting their doors for good. The Boomers left years ago because the churches were too small and there aren’t enough people for social climbing. Gen Xers are too cynical to believe in God. Millennials just see old white people who are probably racist. But, what I see are pre-existing, independent institutions protected by the First Amendment. These are legal institutions that own real property and their occupiers are waiting to hand you the keys. So what if their beliefs on the “end times” are a little different from yours? The basic fundamentals of their faith are sound and biblical. How much longer before this offer is over and the church building becomes another Iglesia Bautista?

I am a member of an underground church and I have come to terms with that. My Bible is the King James Version, composed specifically for use in ethnically Anglo, Christian churches. As an ethnic Fundamentalist Christian, and, more specifically, a Southern Fundamentalist Christian, I only recognize those of the same ethnic background as my people. I am not saying that those of other ethnic backgrounds are not Christians, but I support my people and nation. A small, ethnically homogeneous congregation, is better at tending to the needs of its own. I do not expect someone from the Congo or Mongolia to have the same moral framework or the same concept of deity that I have. I’m not going to have my religious experience watered down in order to accommodate the secular dogma of diversity and social justice.

These obviously are not popular views to hold in the current political climate, but I believe they are going to be essential if our community is going to survive. Now is the time to be strategic and not to attract unnecessary attention. Now is the time to build the framework that our children will use to thrive. If we were to make a concerted call to “take back your grandfather’s church” to men across to the South, we could build a network of independant institutions manned with like minded men, working together for healthy Southern families for the future.

We could take the young man, who is rejected by modern society, and make him an usher, deacon, teacher, minister, associate pastor or even pastor. Once he is in a suit and in leadership, he will not have a hard time finding a good woman. Once he has a wife, they can start a family, as the Lord intended. These isn’t a radical plan, this is a commonsense solution for our declining society.

The liberal, effeminate seminary graduate, who has just spent thousands on his degree, is not looking for a congregation of 80 year-olds to pastor. Truth is, they don’t want him in their church either. They want someone with the old fashioned values that they share. And, if you are too indignant to just smile when they say something about a foreign country, then I wonder how much you really care about providing a safe future for your people.

Dispensational and end times theology is not on the upswing in the Current Year. We have been at war for 18 years because of neoconservatives and their shenanigans. Southerners, especially young ones, are war weary and skeptical. It may have a revival in the future, but for now it is a trend that has come to pass. We should not let a fading trend become a stumbling block for our future.

We pulled back up to the old farmhouse as my father was descending from the tractor. “I sure had a great time,” said my grandfather. I hugged my father and then my mother. She told me that the church, the one I grew up in, was just about to close its doors, along with the one in the next parish that was founded by my fourth great-grandfather just after The Southern War for Independence.

“It’s sad that no one goes there anymore,” my mother said.

I replied, “Sign of the times, I guess.”

-By Charles