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Fred Anderson - Christmas at Ketoctin

By Fred Anderson

    There is no one living who has remembrances of the first Christmastide experienced at ancient Ketoctin Baptist Church in Loudoun County. Based upon what history records of the early Baptists, we can imagine that the birth of the Lord Jesus was celebrated in simple and pious fashion. No tinsel and trappings. No cantatas and pageants. No extravagant gift giving.

    Christmas likely remained plain and simple throughout most of the long history of Ketoctin, which observes its 250th Christmas this month.

Constituted in 1751, it was the second church founded by the stream of Baptists known as the Regulars, a name which distinguished them from another great stream, the Separates.  Robert Baylor Semple, the first historian of his people, noted that the Regulars, “though not so numerous as the Separates, are a large and very respectable body of people.”

    Generally speaking, the Regular Baptists were better educated, given to book learning and appreciative of orderly worship.  They appreciated carefully crafted sermons rather than spontaneous inspiration. They favored reason over emotion and adopted written confessions of faith and church covenants.

    Ketoctin was the mecca for the Regulars.  When an association was formed at Ketoctin Meeting House in 1766 it took the name of the church.  At one time it was a large association including churches across Northern Virginia, in Maryland and in North Carolina.  It was reduced to 12 churches during the anti-missions movement which divided Virginia Baptists and finally became a Primitive Baptist association.  Ketoctin Church joined the Potomac Association.

    Several prominent ministers were associated with Ketoctin Church, including John Garrard, who in the 1750s went “from house to house warning men to flee the wrath to come and preaching Christ,” John Marks, whom Semple ungraciously described as “cold and dry” in his preaching; William F. Broaddus, who took a decidedly pro-missions stand against the “anti-crowd,” Barnet Grimsley, who was so great a pulpit orator that he inspired the young John A. Broadus to become a preacher; Traverse Herndon, one of the great camp meeting preachers; and I.B. Lake, who could have had more prominent pulpits yet remained at Ketoctin where “his pulpit was his throne” for  50 years.

    By the 1930s the church had been reduced to about 34 members.  It literally had given itself away as village churches were established.  Few people made the pilgrimage to ford Catoctin Creek and rest in the shade of the giant trees.  In time, the church became extinct and the only time voices were lifted in song and praise were for annual meetings held by the trustees.  The pristine old building erected in 1854 quietly guarded the cemetery.  No more Christmas celebrations for Ketoctin.

    With the dawning of a new millennium, something remarkable happened at the dead church.  In June 2000 Leesburg and Potomac Baptist churches

attempted to start a mission at old Ketoctin.

    Joe O¹Connell and David Sweet, described as ³tentmakers,² led the effort to have a new congregation in place by the 250th anniversary of the founding of the original church.  They were undaunted by the fact that there were no Sunday school facilities‹only the one-room ancient auditorium‹and, even more unnerving, no plumbing.  People had to possess a pioneering spirit to worship at Ketoctin.  The tentmakers touted that they would offer “the plain and simple truth” which has characterized the church since 1751.  They employed simplicity and practiced dignity in their worship while borrowing at times from the Celtic tradition and using story-telling techniques.

    O¹Connell majored on short sermons which were necessary for a place with no air-conditioning and, again, no indoor plumbing.  Everything about Ketoctin was authentically historic including the outhouse!  Understandably, the tentmakers conducted Bible studies in private homes.

    Remarkably, the very people whom the tentmakers might reach are the

antithesis of ancient Ketoctin.  They are high-tech folks who use computers.

Yet there is something appealing about the tried and true, the traditional, the old-time religion.

    It has been a challenge to open Ketoctin for Christmas 2001. “I know you can ‘jump start’ a church,” says Joe O¹Connell, “but can you do a resurrection?”  Leesburg and Potomac churches, the Potomac Association and the General Association were eager to help. The numbers of worshipers have been small, maybe two dozen, but the Lord was in their midst and that was enough!

    Joseph O¹Connell describes himself as “an Irish-Catholic Democrat from the upper west side of Manhattan” and it shows in his voice.  He “found the Lord” in ‘76 and soon enrolled at Southeastern Seminary.  After seminary, he was in the New York/New Jersey area doing church planting.  He and his wife and their six children came to Northern Virginia in ‘87 so that he could work at Dulles Airport as a transportation specialist.  He became involved in the life of Leesburg Baptist Church and started the Loudoun County jail ministry and soon David Sweet, a schoolteacher and long-time worship leader in other churches, was working alongside him.

    The two tentmakers and the others who care about the new venture have brought Christmas back to Ketoctin. The place that was quiet, even dead, now has joyful noise and life.  For Christmas 2001 O’Connell is hoping that other Baptists might send a contribution for a memorial stone to be placed behind the original tombstone for Pastor John Marks, the ³cold and dry² preacher, who died “about the year 1786, having from first to last maintained a spotless reputation for piety and steadiness.”

    Getting there is a bit tricky.  From Purcellville take the Hillsborough Road, Rt. 690, north to Allder School Rd., Rt. 711, left half a mile to Ketoctin Church Road.  It’s easier to visit the website at www.ketoctin.org.

The church will have a candlelight service at 7 p.m. on Christmas Eve.

    Fred Anderson is executive director of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society.

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