CREEDE HINSHAW: Church rituals becoming relics of the past

I was visiting with a church member who has been Methodist all her life. Now in her 80s, she told me that her parents observed that “If you’re not a Methodist and a Democrat you might as well hang it up.” From what I can tell, both groups haven’t been doing so well in the South lately, but that’s another column.

We discussed how the church used to reach to people through the rapidly fading methods of revivals, homecoming and decoration day.

Decoration Day was observed in her childhood North Alabama church the second weekend of every May. This observance may have originated in North Alabama and is still observed in some congregations. The two days consisted of Sunday worship, clearing and cleaning the gravestones and graveyard of the adjoining church cemetery and holding a dinner on the cemetery grounds. I’ve never had a meal at a church cemetery, but this was once quite common.

This service helped the congregation remember and honor the dead, keep the cemetery grounds in good shape and remind the parishioners of their continuity with the past and their hope of the future. Many country churches have cemeteries adjacent to their church building, but the balance has shifted over the past century to where there are far more people buried in the graveyard than sitting in the pews. This tradition, like many country churches, is slowly dying.

As for revivals, no self-respecting church would go through a year without holding one, usually in late summer or early fall, a time period left over from the harvest calendar. The Baptists sometimes called these evangelistic events “protracted meetings,” the difference being that a revival had a definite ending date whereas a protracted meeting was an open-ended affair depending on the work of the mysterious Holy Spirit.

Either way, the revival was designed to invigorate a spiritually lazy church and bring salvation to recalcitrant, unrepentant sinners. A serious revival would include a highly skilled, enthusiastic song leader in addition to the preacher. Services could include breakfast meetings, luncheons and the evening service. The guest preacher would often eat at the homes of different church members, and there would probably be one covered dish dinner for the whole congregation.

Few congregations hold revivals anymore. People are working all hours of the day and night; children and youths have crammed lives, and fewer people are attracted to the kind of emotional appeals once made in these annual rituals.

Finally, we agreed homecoming is another disappearing church ritual. This service allowed long-distant church members to return to their birthplace and the church of their childhood or teen years. A favorite former pastor would be invited to preach and “dinner on the grounds” might be as much a highlight as the service itself.

Email Creede Hinshaw at [email protected].