Growing up in the Southern Presbyterian Church

I grew up going to church at Cedar Springs Presbyterian Church in Knoxville, TN. At that time, Cedar Springs Presbyterian was in the old P.C.U.S. denomination, which was known as the "Southern Presbyterian Church." Our ministers were Rev. Capel, and then Rev. Robert Ferguson, a Scottish pastor.

To be a Southern Presbyterian Church meant two things: one, that you were Presbyterian, and two, that you were not "Northern Presbyterian."

Looking back on it, there was a strong sense of being Presbyterian in a Scottish sort of way as the sermons and service were shaped by our Scottish minister, who was the pastor in the years I remember best. The best I can describe it is that it was a Presbyterianism that had a strong sense of celebration of the goodness of life, a deep sense of trust in God's goodness and sovereignty, together with a strong sense of personal, individual piety. There was also a certain intellectual character as well, though not in the rationalistic sort of way, more in a poetic sort of way.

These are just some feelings I have as I remember what it meant to grow up in the church that I did. Most of the influence when I was young came through my mother's way of being a church member, and through the Sunday School teachers I had. As I grew older, the sermons themselves were important. I remember listening quite carefully most of the time to Rev. Ferguson, who was always an interesting and meaningful speaker from the pulpit. He would tell the stories of the Bible in a way that I could identify with, and I got the sense that these stories were very important and sacred to him.

In a Southern Presbyterian Church, as I said above, it was clear that you were not one of the Northern Presbyterian churches, which meant that you didn't go in for too much politics or talk of social reform in church, though you still were reasonably open to consider social movements individually. And, I have learned through later experience, it meant that we weren't too interested in liturgical services (a lot of responsive readings) or the church calendar (emphasis on what special church holy days were being observed, other than Christmas or Easter).

I was very much influenced by the positive experience I had with communicants class as I prepared to be baptized and become a church member at age 12. I was in a class with two other children, and we were taught by Rev. Ferguson. Our pastor got along very well with us, and encouraged us to ask any questions we wanted, and he would respond very freely with his answers. I got the sense of the openness of faith and the intellectual part of it as well. And, I think I got a sense that our pastor was a genuinely good and deeply spiritual person as well.

One other influence was very strong and that was my parents teaching by word and example that deeds were most significant in religion, and that concern for those in need was the first matter of a genuine religious faith.

As I endured my high school years, I distanced myself at first from church and then came back to matters of faith with a powerful awakening to an adult faith towards the end of high school. As I came back to my roots, I did so through engagement with some very conservative movements of Christianity, much more conservative than the church I had been raised in. But, my roots in the Presybterian Church always caused me to have certain misgivings about the conservative parachurch groups I was participating in from time to time. I was deeply influenced by the broad reading of the Bible from my Presbyterian tradition, so that where one passage was over-emphasized by this group or that, I would go to my Bible myself, and figure that I would find another passage or other passages that would give a more clear picture of the issue at hand. I was also deeply influenced by my Presbyterian upbringing in that I believed in the graciousness of God, and I didn't believe in the need of an impressive religious leader or emotional appeal in preaching. Which is another way of saying that I was immune to the revivalistic techniques of many preachers. As they appealed to me to come forward and make sure I was saved, something in me rested and rejoiced and trusted in God's Word deep within me that couldn't be messed with by human beings.

These are just some of the things I went to college with. And, in college, I had an awakening to the "life of the mind." My background allowed me the freedom to really read and study religion and philosophy, no reading I did was very more important than the reading of Soren Kierkegaard's books. I will try to trace that influence next time.

As I go through this exercise in trying to remember where I came from religiously, I do so to understand better how I have come to believe as I do, and also so that i might begin to understand the deep influence that our experiences have upon us. Then, instead of assuming I have all this common ground with people, I might listen a while to where they came from, and come to understand what ground is common and what is not.