Blount Baptists hold onto time-honored acts like foot washing

Blount Baptists hold onto time-honored acts like foot washing

On a recent Sunday night — after the preaching, the singing and the “amens” — the right hand of Christian fellowship was extended inside the bannered walls of Pleasant View Baptist Church, Holly Pond.

Then came the feet.

The two grown men still wet from their baptism knew they had no immediate need for towels. As soon as they rejoined the congregation for the Lord’s Supper they were bound to get wet again — at least from their ankles down.

Like most Alabama Baptists, this small Blount Baptist Association congregation starts the sacred Lord’s Supper meal with tiny bits of crackers and sips it finished from cups no bigger than thimbles.

Excluding their shaped-note hymnals, the only thing out of the ordinary that night — and only slightly so — from many Southern Baptist churches was all the empty socks that appeared after Communion.

But Pleasant View Baptist, like most other Blount Association congregations, will almost always observe that sacrament in tandem with foot washing, as did Christ with His disciples that fateful night in Jerusalem.

It is an unnervingly intimate act of service whereby boss and employee, old and young, pastor and congregation meet as equals, and the magnitude of the Lord’s humbling is felt rather than recited, according to Pastor Randy Burtram.

Yet it is this often overlooked element of worship — plus a fierce appetite for autonomy — that has for years shrouded churches of Blount Association in doctrinal mystery.

Their independence is in part displayed by Blount’s semantic preference for the term “moderator” where other associations use “director of missions” or “associational missionary.” This difference has even led some to speculate that the association is anti-missions.

But despite “old-fashioned” attitudes and whispers that they are essentially Primitive Baptists in Missionary Baptists’ clothing, their respect for a woman named Lottie Moon and another named Annie Armstrong is, as Burtram claims, alive, well and sincere.

“Of course we give to Lottie Moon and to Annie Armstrong, we’ve got individuals we give missions to and we’ll give some to the Cooperative Program. There are probably more of our churches giving now than ever before,” he said.
One of Pleasant View’s two music directors, Danny Alldredge, currently sits on the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions and Burtram himself served for six years in the 1990s.

“I’ll be honest, when some of the people heard I was from the Blount Association I got a funny look,” Burtram said. “But it was more so from some of the older ones who remembered some of the rebelliousness of the Blount Association years ago.”

Troy G. Halbrooks, former Blount Association moderator, said, “Our association maintains the more rigid form of worship than the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) per se.”

He served three terms in the yearly elected position until Norman Putnam was elected in October 2005. The moderator serves as the chair of the association’s executive committee, which handles any business that comes up in the course of the year.

Blount churches, Halbrooks pointed out, still choose to adhere to the New Hampshire Baptist Confession of 1833 (the SBC’s Baptist Faith & Message is an adaptation of the New Hampshire confession).

“Overall, most of the association has had a real desire to stay as much the same as possible (while other churches change) while still doing the will of God,” Burtram explained.

On the surface, distinctions between Blount and the remainder of Alabama’s Baptist associations appear real enough, but the exact how and why of Blount Association’s peculiar preservation exist only in the archived world of associational and congregational minutes — if they exist at all.

Elizabeth Wells, coordinator of the Special Collection Unit at Birmingham’s Samford University, theorizes the explanation as regional — Appalachian legacies watering the roots of a rugged religion.

From a certain perspective, however, participation in Blount Association — which technically spans churches in five counties — is incumbent more on ideological than geographical proximity.

“We have churches in five different counties that are members of the association, and it’s voluntary on their part,” Halbrooks said. “If they worship in the same manner and spirit that we do and they want to join, then they petition the association.”

And Burtram said he’s found the association’s ideologies even further spread than the association’s official membership.

“I was in a church this week in Winston County, and they’ve adopted the New Hampshire confession and use it,” Burtram said. “There are roots of this in several areas of the state, but as far as I know, ours is the only whole association.”

While Blount Association’s way of doing things seems little more than a preference for that old-time religion, Burtram insists that the foot-filled bowls and shaped-note hymnals are more than traditions intended to honor someone’s grandfather. “These are things we feel like are biblical,” he said. “We feel like they’re more biblical than just historical for us.

“Those are some things that distinguish us. But we’re not nearly as different as some think … and maybe not as different as some would want us to be,” he said with a laugh.