I know about Third Baptist Church of Owensboro, Kentucky. For six years back in the last millennium I was their pastor.
I wrote a book about that, with the title taken from a letter I received, post marked South Bend, Indiana:
“Many years ago I found a dime in an invelop (sic) in a Sunday School Room and spent it. Bro. Sam P. Martin was pastor and Mrs. Givens was Sunday School teacher. Didn’t want to miss heaven for a dime. God Bless.”
Taped across the top of the letter was a single dime. I titled the book, Heaven for a Dime.
More about that church below, but now I note the rise to prominence of Third Baptist Church of San Francisco, the spiritual home of the Vice President (and perhaps, soon to be President!) of the United States, Kamala Harris.
That Third Baptist is an African American congregation founded in 1852 and affiliated with the American Baptist Churches USA It was launched as the First Colored Baptist Church but a few years later change the name.
Since 1976, their pastor has been the Rev. Amos C. Brown. His short-term predecessor was Frederick Haynes Jr, who had succeeded his father, the self-named Frederick Douglas Haynes who served as pastor and community leader for 39 years. The latest in this line of distinguished preachers, Frederick Douglas Haynes III, is pastor of Friendship West Baptist Church of Dallas.
Many American cities have their own Third Baptist: Youngstown, Philadelphia, Springfield and Lawrence in Massachusetts, Chicago and Marion in Illinois, Nashville and Murfreesboro in Tennessee, Stratford in New Hampshire, Hampton, Portsmouth, and Petersburg in Virginia, and Washington DC.
Third Baptist in St. Louis is one of the more notable such churches, especially because of their former pastor C. Oscar Johnson, prominent in the city and also in the Baptist World Alliance.
But none can match the drama at my Third Baptist Church.
It launched in 1896 after Methodist evangelist Sam Jones came to town and filled the wooden tabernacle night after night with his entertaining denunciations of the brewing, selling, and drinking of alcohol or loaning money to those who did. It was enough to split First Baptist Church. As the pastor and a majority of the people solemnly processed out of the sanctuary one Sunday morning, everybody sang the song, “God Be With ‘till We Meet Again.”
They met in the courthouse for a while then built a sanctuary that bears remarkable likeness to the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. Interestingly, that famous “mother church of country music” got its name when the same evangelist, Sam Jones, came to Nashville in 1904 to preach the funeral service of one of his most famous converts, Thomas G. Ryman.
The story goes that, years earlier, after hearing Jones preach, Ryman demonstrated his religious conversion by dumping into the Cumberland River all the alcohol on his riverboat. In the funeral message, Jones urged the people to name the facility after Ryman who had originally built the structure as a gospel preaching center for Jones.
But that is Nashville, not Owensboro.
A few years before those events and after Third Baptist paid off the cost of their building, Texas pastor and educator B. H. Carroll came to town to preach the dedication. More than 2,500 people filled the sanctuary in what was for years the largest church in the southeastern United States.
What was happening there impressed the evangelist who came to town the year after to hold a revival. J. Frank Norris was his name.
Norris’ preaching had little impact on Third Baptist, but his experience at the church gave him fresh ideas of what could happen at his church, First Baptist of Fort Worth. He returned to the Texas town transformed in imagination and methods to become the most consequential fundamentalist preacher of the first half of the 20th century.
That is another story altogether, already told by many people. But all of this comes to mind when I see Kamala Harris and think of her sitting in the pew of the Third Baptist Church of San Francisco. If and when we meet, we will have something, at least, to talk about.
I know about Third Baptist Church of Owensboro, Kentucky. For six years back in the last millennium I was their pastor.
I wrote a book about that, with the title taken from a letter I received, post marked South Bend, Indiana:
“Many years ago I found a dime in an invelop (sic) in a Sunday School Room and spent it. Bro. Sam P. Martin was pastor and Mrs. Givens was Sunday School teacher. Didn’t want to miss heaven for a dime. God Bless.”
Taped across the top of the letter was a single dime. I titled the book, Heaven for a Dime.
More about that church below, but now I note the rise to prominence of Third Baptist Church of San Francisco, the spiritual home of the Vice President (and perhaps, soon to be President!) of the United States, Kamala Harris.
That Third Baptist is an African American congregation founded in 1852 and affiliated with the American Baptist Churches USA It was launched as the First Colored Baptist Church but a few years later change the name.
Since 1976, their pastor has been the Rev. Amos C. Brown. His short-term predecessor was Frederick Haynes Jr, who had succeeded his father, the self-named Frederick Douglas Haynes who served as pastor and community leader for 39 years. The latest in this line of distinguished preachers, Frederick Douglas Haynes III, is pastor of Friendship West Baptist Church of Dallas.
Many American cities have their own Third Baptist: Youngstown, Philadelphia, Springfield and Lawrence in Massachusetts, Chicago and Marion in Illinois, Nashville and Murfreesboro in Tennessee, Stratford in New Hampshire, Hampton, Portsmouth, and Petersburg in Virginia, and Washington DC.
Third Baptist in St. Louis is one of the more notable such churches, especially because of their former pastor C. Oscar Johnson, prominent in the city and also in the Baptist World Alliance.
But none can match the drama at my Third Baptist Church.
It launched in 1896 after Methodist evangelist Sam Jones came to town and filled the wooden tabernacle night after night with his entertaining denunciations of the brewing, selling, and drinking of alcohol or loaning money to those who did. It was enough to split First Baptist Church. As the pastor and a majority of the people solemnly processed out of the sanctuary one Sunday morning, everybody sang the song, “God Be With ‘till We Meet Again.”
They met in the courthouse for a while then built a sanctuary that bears remarkable likeness to the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. Interestingly, that famous “mother church of country music” got its name when the same evangelist, Sam Jones, came to Nashville in 1904 to preach the funeral service of one of his most famous converts, Thomas G. Ryman.
The story goes that, years earlier, after hearing Jones preach, Ryman demonstrated his religious conversion by dumping into the Cumberland River all the alcohol on his riverboat. In the funeral message, Jones urged the people to name the facility after Ryman who had originally built the structure as a gospel preaching center for Jones.
But that is Nashville, not Owensboro.
A few years before those events and after Third Baptist paid off the cost of their building, Texas pastor and educator B. H. Carroll came to town to preach the dedication. More than 2,500 people filled the sanctuary in what was for years the largest church in the southeastern United States.
What was happening there impressed the evangelist who came to town the year after to hold a revival. J. Frank Norris was his name.
Norris’ preaching had little impact on Third Baptist, but his experience at the church gave him fresh ideas of what could happen at his church, First Baptist of Fort Worth. He returned to the Texas town transformed in imagination and methods to become the most consequential fundamentalist preacher of the first half of the 20th century.
That is another story altogether, already told by many people. But all of this comes to mind when I see Kamala Harris and think of her sitting in the pew of the Third Baptist Church of San Francisco. If and when we meet, we will have something, at least, to talk about.
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