Posted by COMF [COMF] on March 28, 1999 at 07:56:15 {oRa3VCcycQMtmOPGs.lAMW70vgA2d.KEI}:
In Reply to: To Catch a Bethelite posted by Mary on March 27, 1999 at 19:01:11:
Hi, Mary. The behavior and attitudes you describe recalled a memory of mine from back when I was an active witness, but with an interesting twist on your story. It's not about witnesses.
This story depends on cultural mor�s, so I have to give a setting. I live where once there were laws enforcing segregation of the black and white races in virtually all matters, including places of worship. You didn't have people of different races mingling in the same building for worship; there were First Baptist Churches for the white folks, and First Baptist Churches for the black folks. Those laws were done away with in the sixties, but even so it took a very long time for any real integration to occurr, so that in 1977 when my story takes place there was still a very distinct division (there still is today). My point is, for the sake of the story, that there were all-black churches which had a whole community and culture I was unfamiliar with as a young white man.
I became friends with a black brother in our congregation, and we sometimes would trade stories about our differing community or cultural oddities. One that he told me involved the way the black churches in rural east Texas functioned. Many of them had preachers who traveled around from church to church holding services. There was a group of deacons who handled the church business, but usually there was a different "Reverend" each week. Many of these preachers were young single men.
My friend told me the attitude of the older ladies of the church whenever one of these eligible young preachers came to speak. Advice to the young ladies of the church: "You better get him." And what was meant by that, apparently, was, get him by whatever means was available, including getting pregnant by him in hopes of marrying. So the result was that the young preachers moved around from church to church each week, and got to eat a lot of fine meals of home cooking and got to bed a lot of fine young ladies. And the bellies of young single women, and the ranks of young single preachers, just swelled and swelled...
That was how my friend told it... "You better get him." Maybe the attitude is universal, reckon?
COMF