Deformation 0

I was raised Southern Baptist, back when the Southern Baptist Convention was a Protestant denomination, before it became a political cult.

Aside:

I will say that the little Southern Baptist church in which I grew up did very much its own thing (a central Baptist tenet is priesthood of the believer–the other is baptism of the believer–and in accordance thereunto believers sometimes choose to ignore the hierarchy). They were quite willing to ignore the SBC if they thought it was, as my old boss used to say, in error.

I remember that, after I was well into adulthood (at least, chronologically) and had long since moved away in search of gainful employment, a black couple from up North (as we used to say) moved into the area, sampled many churches, black and white, and eventually joined the little all-white church that I grew up in as being the one where they felt most comfortable.

And the congregation was proud that they did.

When I last had contact with that church, they were still going their own way.