I think I'll have the Chicken Grinola; Cosby Tennessee the Kennedy's and Baptism by Not Marney

  Ive become facebook friends with two successors of the Great Carlyle Marney this last year, one at Myers Park in Charlotte and the other at FBC Austin, Texas. Recently came across a great 25 page online tribute to Marney many of you should read by author's last name, Stanley.

   One of the not Marney's, Steve Shoemaker, recently wrote a book on Baptism, central to the Christian pilgrimage especially of Baptist with the Dunk, full immersion.

    The Thin Line between our earthly situation and eternity and Heaven in Baptism is accentuated as is the washing away of the stain of Sin. Here are two of Baptist finest on the book:

  With the wisdom and accessibility of a seasoned pastor and preacher, Shoemaker offers us a beautifully written exploration of both the mystery and the practicality of Christian baptism. Anyone preparing for parish ministry should own this book; it will prove a theological and homiletical resource across Christian traditions. And for those of us yearning for a deeper understanding of what it means to follow, to give our whole selves to the “life-long apprenticeship” that is Christian faith, this book will be a valuable guide along the way.

—Rev. Dr. Amy Butler, former senior minister
Riverside Church in the City of New York
Founder, Invested Faith

Steve Shoemaker has the wisdom to know that in times such as these, the human family needs to be grounded in memory, identity, and the grace of God—and so he wrote a book about Holy Baptism. Using his characteristically accessible style to open the deepest truths, Steve gently pours into these pages personal and biblical story, theology, and lines from every literary genre, inviting us to wade into a deeper understanding of just how much and in how many ways “God loves us with water.” This book, like its author, is a gift to the church in all its manifestations.

—Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli Senior pastor,
Foundry United Methodist Church Washington, DC
Author of Sacred Resistance: A Practical Guide to Christian Witness and Dissent

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   But what I want to do here is take a look at Baptism in literature with some of the following examples, and then soon in comments two great stories of Baptism from the Preacher, writer and good soul Lamar Wadsworth of Rockmart Ga.

The first person my Dad baptized was Freddie James at the Bethel Baptist Church outside Newport Tenn in a creek near the Baltimore Community. James became the principal at Cosby High School, the community with one of the worst reputations for corruption and mischief in the state. For a while all that part of East Tenn about twenty miles above Gatlinburg was on the verge of being taken over by Appalachian version of organized Crime. Paul James, Freddie's Father, on county council in Cocke County stood up to them.

      Pulitzer Prize Winner Cormac McCarthy of the Light Pink Baptist Church Road outside Murval Tennessee mentions Cosby on Several occasions in his new novel The Passenger. It comes up as a place for this world traveler to go off the grid with all the intrigue that's come Bobby Western's way since he left East Tennessee.

     MCcarthy covers everything in the lifetime of those of us born late forties through mid fifties and scorches the Kennedy's circa page 330 in a lunch conversation that ends with the chicken grinola on page 335. Jump in there or the last chapter and read backwards and you'll be hooked.

    As a grad of Catholic High School in Knoxville, McCarthy at least in this novel has very cynical view of Baptism and Belief, saying Baptism of Babies is more of something akin to frat hazing when a cult gets its "clutches" on a child than a sign of pilgrimage toward redemption and higher purpose in life.

    A Half century ago another Catholic writer Flannery Oconnor had a higher view of Baptism. In South Georgia a boy of no definable aspirations in the world gets baptized in a creek. He comes up on the other side of the congregational audience and a deacon in the church tells him, on the other side of the creek, you didnt count, but you count now.

     On the other hand my friend Ron Rash recently wrote a dark tale of Baptism that explores the soul of a pastor. A Well known evil character in a 19th century community wants the cover of Baptism to wed, have relations with a young girl. The preacher says he never questions an applicant and believes in the power of Baptism to change a man's heart, even one as evil as the current candidate. In an ending worthy of Oconnor, deus ex machina takes care of the preacher's dilemma for him. The Creek in this story is frozen which ominously sets up a surprise ending.

   Water is almost a character in many of Rash's writings. He says there is either redemption or a character is a goner when he gets near water.

    And there is the consultant for the movie The Gangs of New York, Luc Sante who writes of the Museum of Religion and Crime. He is fascinated by the hard scrabble Catholicism of Ireland and Hard Scrabble Evangelicalism of the Plains of America which hold in common the elemental passage of the rite of Baptism.

    Some of you remember Robert Duvall getting baptised in Tender Mercies. Duvall I understand supported Donald Trump so mysteries remain in the world, but he also played some memorable roles in a couple Billy Bob Thornton movies. Nobody forgets dwight yoakm  in slingblade telling Karl Childers to call up a  preacher, I can't baptize you.