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Chapter 4 “Putting on Christianity”: Ritual Practice On a Saturday in October 1792, Elizabeth Powell recounted her conversion experience in the Brandywine meetinghouse of Chester County, Pennsylvania. The next day, she and Mary Davis waited to be baptized in the Brandywine River by Elder Joshua Vaughan. Before he could proceed, Joseph and Mary Powell interrupted the ritual to object to Elizabeth’s admission because of “an old abuse of her tongue.” Joseph claimed he would “not sit in communion” with Elizabeth unless she gave satisfaction for her irregular speech. Mary asserted that if Elizabeth acknowledged her sinful conduct to the assembled members, she would be “reconciled with her.”After their declarations , the Powells went home, leaving Elizabeth to apologize for her past behavior to Vaughan and six other congregants. The baptismal rite resumed but Elizabeth’s entry to membership was momentarily delayed by the Powells’ announcement . Two months later, the church welcomed her as a member.1 The laity played a crucial role in ritual practice among Anglo-American Baptists. Though they were recent members themselves (joining the church in 1790), Joseph and Mary challenged the elder’s acceptance of Elizabeth’s admission. They were obligated to question her entry into the godly community because they had knowledge of previous conduct that connoted an unchristian spirit; membership could not be conferred unless old sins had been repented. Elizabeth’s past behavior did not suit that of the ideal Christian— or woman—in this religious society. As members of the laity, the Powells willingly disrupted the sacred rite of baptism; allowing it to go forward without speaking up would contaminate the spiritual community. Clerical and lay intervention in Baptist church rites contributed to a range of customs, which changed over time and varied by region. The parameters of this ritual practice were peculiar to time and place and strongly rooted in the historical background of its practitioners. Baptists of British North America traced their beginnings to the activities of their English ancestors, who struggled to define their own traditions as true embodiments of Christ’s word. Interpreting what that true church represented and which rites were to be used became the subject of intense deliberation among English Baptists during the seventeenth century. This resulted in a complex and often con- flicting legacy, which informed the church rites of Anglo-American Baptists and their adaptations in eighteenth-century congregations. Through the trial and error of ritual performances and theological discussions, Baptist laypeople and clergymen honed a repertoire of rites suited to their specific social needs and political contexts. At the same time, Baptists invested them with a particular spiritual ethos that occurred through the body. These rites provided a means to enact and perpetuate faith among believers and communicated knowledge about spirituality, social decorum, and religious community ; they told Baptists about their place in the larger world. In addition, ritual practice became a mechanism to inculcate self-identity. Ritual served as a centerpiece of Baptist corporeal spirituality in early America. It became a primary means of evoking and retaining religious belief . As with conversion, church ritual occurred through sacred performances . Early American Baptists utilized bodily imagery to define their unity as co-religionists, which they, in turn, affirmed through faith and rite. Following New Testament theology, Baptists placed the body at the center of Christian belief. As a site of sin and salvation, as a focus of faith and unbelief, the body revealed the level of spirituality attained by the individual. Believers entered into faith through converting the body, maintained spiritual identity based on ritualizing the body, and experienced falling away and reintegration through disciplining the body.2 The centrality of the body in this theology is reflected in the common Protestant phrase “holy walking and conversation,” one used regularly by Baptists. Holy walking—or walking “the path of righteousness ”—denoted faithfulness to an ideal of spiritual belief as active and embodied. The term “conversation” referred not only to an individual’s verbal proficiency but also to one’s personal conduct, social reputation, and way of life generally. To maintain one’s faith, one had “to keep a close walk with God and be earnest with him day and night.” Church members who engaged in sinful behavior were accused of “irregular” or “disorderly walking.” This metaphor of walking with the Lord was utilized in church preambles. Members of the Middletown meeting agreed “to walk in all holiness, godliness, humility, and brother love, as much as in...

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