We Were a Peculiar People Once: Confessions of An Old-Time Baptist

David Lyle Jeffrey

Reviewed by: D. G. Hart

We Were a Peculiar People Once: Confessions of An Old-Time Baptist, by David Lyle Jeffrey. Baylor University Press, 2023. Hardcover, 184 pages, $32.99. Reviewed by OP elder D. G. Hart.

Some Reformed Protestants mock Baptists. Then along comes a Baptist with a sense of humor, and the laughing subsides. Here is a decidedly Calvinistic Baptist with an ironical cast of mind who warmly recognizes folly among the most devout believers. “Here” in that sentence refers to David Lyle Jeffrey, a retired Baylor University professor and provost. Jeffrey has had such a distinguished academic career (he is now 82) that his accomplishments could fill this review. He studied at Wheaton College, followed by a PhD in literature at Princeton, then taught at Canadian universities (Victoria and Ottawa) before Baylor. He is published widely in English literature and the history and influence of the English Bible.

With that pedigree, especially the stop at Wheaton College where the earthy humor of German Lutherans and Dutch Calvinists is taboo, a reader might expect a memoir about growing up Baptist to ooze with godliness. Although Jeffrey’s highly readable and often moving book leads to a serious point about holiness, he still captures the down-to-earth character of Baptist otherworldliness. His Protestants were a peculiar people whose devotion was sometimes as funny as it was sanctified.

The first paragraph of the book sets the tone. Baptist life revolved around “the Sabbath.” When not in church, the Jeffrey kids read books. Only later in life did Jeffrey’s father relax the rules and allow the boys to play catch in the backyard. That was around the time that Jeffrey was allowed to change out of church clothes for the afternoon before redressing for the evening service. Mrs. Jeffrey made this concession on economic rather than “strictly religious” grounds so the children would not ruin good clothes. Even so, the Baptist piety of 1940s Canada revolved around the Lord’s Day, with two services (one evangelistic at night), lengthy exegetical sermons (sometimes an hour), hymns and psalms sung by the congregation, and abstinence from worldly thoughts and (most) recreations.

Jeffrey goes on to describe the home and church life of his youth. The joy of the Lord is evident but does not prohibit mirth produced by the comical mix of sacred and profane. For instance, Jeffrey recalls the strange aspect of missionary conferences when some of the most sexually modest of Protestants allowed their children to see missionaries posing with native people wearing nothing but “a few beads and perhaps a betel nut-stained grin.” Jeffrey also covers “church expletives” —those phrases honed by Roman Catholics and repurposed by Baptists: “Holy smokes,” “for Pete’s sake,” and “for the luvva Mike!”

Jeffrey does for Baptists what Garrison Keillor did for Lutherans in his “Lake Wobegon” stories, but this book is not mere nostalgia. Underneath the author’s recollections is praise for a sturdy faith that took sin seriously, relied exclusively on Christ’s saving work, and was saturated in Scripture. Jeffrey wrote the book because he worries about contemporary Protestantism— “the church of the Blessed PowerPoint—where fashion, contemporary music, humor, and politics have replaced the ‘old, old story.’” Jeffrey’s Old-Time Baptists remind us that “we need to teach that there is a far higher good—and pleasure—in being faithful to the commandments and precepts of God, however it may marginalize us socially.”

For Orthodox Presbyterians, another “peculiar people,” Jeffrey’s excavation of Scottish Baptist piety should be both provocative and edifying.