Baptism In The Creek, Easter Sunday, April 8, 2012

These photos were shot at a baptism in Indian Creek in Morgan County Kentucky on Easter Sunday, April 8, 2012.  I posted them on my Facebook account at that time but, for some unknown reason, I never posted them on this blog or wrote about it.  Sadly, I didn't write down the names of the participants and do not remember them. I will do some checking with my sources in the community and see what I can learn about their identities.  The baptism was being conducted by the Lick  Branch Enterprise Baptist Church in West Liberty, Kentucky.  When I was growing up, nearly every baptism in Knott County Kentucky and the surrounding counties all across Eastern Kentucky and Southern West Virginia was done in the creek and the time of the year usually did not matter.  I have heard numerous stories of ice being broken on creeks in order to conduct a baptism.  But most churches and most denominations all over Appalachia have now installed baptismal fonts and no longer conduct them in the creek.  I have actually attended one other baptism in the creek on Flat Fork in Morgan County where someone I knew was being baptized a couple of years ago and I neglected to take a camera. Sometime in the neighborhood of twenty-five years ago, I also attended another baptism in the creek which was being conducted by the White Oak Christian Church of the Disciples of Christ in Morgan County which is generally considered to be one of the more liberal denominations in this area.  The person being baptized was the son of a deacon who sometimes served as a lay minister and the church had no baptistry at that time. To return to the discussion of the particular baptism depicted in these photographs, the Enterprise Baptist Association is a member of the Kentucky Baptist Convention and is one of the more liberal associations which trace their historical lineage to the Old Regular Baptists or simply the Regular Baptists.  As these baptisms grow more and more rare in the creeks of Appalachia, I urge all of my readers to attend them when you are aware of them and be absolutely certain to take photographs and preserve and disseminate those photographs in a manner which will make them available to historians, researchers, and religious scholars. All photographs in this blog post were shot by Roger D. Hicks and are fully protected under US copyright law.  Do not use these photographs in any manner without express written permission from Roger D. Hicks.

The religious scholar Emma Bell Miles stated that baptisms "...always take place in a pool of water, or the deepest part of a creek, or in a small river, no matter what the season of the year.  Even today it is not uncommon for ice to be cut through.  ...Most of the converts [the newly baptized] are shouting by the time they gain the bank, and nearly run amuck in the crowd before they can be persuaded to retire to a hastily erected brush shelter and change to dry clothing.  No attempt is ever made to check the excitement."  (Quoted in "Appalachian Mountain Religion A History" by Deborah Vansau McCauley, p. 86-87). I cannot state that this particular baptism portrayed in my photographs was that exciting or excitable.  I do recall that both women who were baptized were crying both as they entered and left the water.  But there was no shouting and any expressions of overt excitement quickly died down and the crowd dispersed quickly.  I must also say, in response to the quotation above that I have never seen a "hastily erected brush shelter" at any baptism I was ever witness to and I can remember attending baptisms for about sixty years in Appalachia.  I have seen shouting, crying, spontaneous preaching from individuals other than the preachers conducting the ceremony, and large flurries of hugging, kissing, and hand shaking from members of the crowd.  And while I am on the subject of spontaneous expressions of emotion in church services, I remember how much shouting I used to see in Old Regular Baptist church services when I was a child.  I have always remembered one old woman whose name I forgot long ago but clearly remember her appearance and her shouting in church.  She had a stock phrase which she used when she began shouting.  "Praise the Lord!  Praise His high and holy name!"  I can remember dozens of occasions when I saw this woman move around the church shouting, crying, clapping her hands, shaking hands, hugging other female church members, and repeatedly using that two sentence signature exclamation.

In a section of his book, "Faith and Meaning in the Southern Uplands",  my friend Loyal Jones wrote extensively on "The Importance of Baptism".  In that writing he said several important things about baptism which have doubtless led the research and writing of numerous Appalachian religious scholars ever since.  First and foremost, he discussed the symbolism of baptism and its history within the Christians churches.

"Water is necessary to life, and it is also a cleanser.  In the religious context, water is the universal metaphor for cleansing, renewal, regeneration and rebirth...The symbolism is twofold: first, the burial from the old life and the resurrection to the new; and second, the cleansing from sin."  (Jones, pp. 147-148)   

But for anyone who knows Loyal Jones and his work, you know that he could not discuss many subjects without a dose of humor.  On that same page 148, he tells the story of an old Baptist preacher who was being castigated by his church members and deacons about his belief in total immersion baptism.

"The preacher said he would preach in the old tradition of letting the Bible fall open wherever it would, and take the first passage his eye lighted on as evidence that the Lord wanted him to preach on that text.  So on the next Sunday, he let the Bible fall open, and he read, "The voice of the turtle is heard in our land."  He studied a minute on the text and commenced, "This morning as I was a-crossing the creek on the way to church, I saw an old mud turtle a-sunning hisself.  When he saw me, he went kerplunk into the water.  Now, he didn't reach down there and get a little bit of water and sprinkle on his forehead.  No!  When he went in, he went all the way in, and there you have your doctrine of total immersion." (Jones, p. 148)

That anecdote from Loyal Jones does an excellent job of two things.  First, it explains succinctly the belief that most traditional Appalachian churches and their ministers hold about baptism and total immersion.  Second, it proves once again that Loyal Jones is one of the funniest and most accurate writers in all of Appalachia especially when he is writing about culture, religion, or humor. 

David Kimbrough, in his book "Taking Up Serpents Snake Handlers of Eastern Kentucky, describes total immersion in slightly different but concurring words: "If individuals experienced conversion, they were later baptized in a creek or river.  Converts at Forrester's Creek were baptized by total immersion in a public ceremony.  Baptism was a transformative indication of release from 'the old status order' to a 'new status order'." (Kimbrough, p. 75.) It has been my experience in attending numerous churches from numerous denominations all across Appalachia that most Appalachian believers see the public act of baptism by total immersion in freely flowing water as both a symbolic cleansing and a confirmation of their public admission of the acceptance of faith and their belief that their sins have been forgiven.  Or to put it in a slightly more colloquial manner, they believe they have "been washed as white as snow". 

In conclusion, I would state that baptism by total immersion in freely flowing water is a vanishing practice in Appalachia.  But it is still deeply woven into the religious life of the region.  Many small, more traditional churches still practice some form of total immersion baptism in freely flowing water while also bending to suit the individual beliefs of some of their incoming converts by allowing total immersion in a baptismal font or tank.  Just as many other core Appalachian beliefs are being assimilated out of existence, so is baptism by total immersion in freely flowing water.