Messengers in Atlanta

A 300-voiced choir and the Georgia State Girls' Military Band burst into Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow. A huge throng of Atlantans, ringing Terminal Station Plaza, cheered and handclapped as a white-haired man, large of frame, square of face, firm of jaw, stepped from the station. Atlanta's Mayor William Berry Hartsfield, a representative of Georgia's Governor Eurith Dickinson Rivers, Baptist ministers white and black greeted him--Rev. Dr. George Washington Truett, best-known Baptist in the world. He had arrived in Atlanta last week to preside over the sixth congress of the Baptist World Alliance.

There are 12,000,000 Baptists in the world, 10,000,000 of them in North America, where they are the largest Protestant sect. Last week 50,000 Baptists from 60 rations totally immersed Atlanta's hotels, boardinghouses, Baptist homes, tourist camps. These were '"messengers" from far-flung local churches which, never bound by anything Baptist conventions say or do, are the cornerstone of the Baptist faith. In its week of oldtime oratory and hymn-singing, the Atlanta congress was to hear much of the need for Baptist evangelism, for Baptist freedom of worship in a troubled world. The messengers, most of them sober small-town businessman and their sober wives, eschewed Atlanta's worldly amusements, fraternized with one another and with messengers from overseas. In Atlanta were Baptists from Rumania, from Spain; fourteen Baptists came from Latvia. The Latvians were all one family: Rev. William Fetler, prison worker, his wife and twelve children, who play together as an orchestra.

Baptist Truett, 72, North Carolina-born, was made a preacher against his will at 19, when his church "voiced its conviction that God had called George W. Truett to the ministry," and more or less forcibly ordained him. Preacher Truett founded a high school--Georgia's Hiawassee, now a junior college--before he finished college himself, at 30. For 42 years he has been pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, which today has an enrollment of more than 6,000 and a $1,000,000 institutional plant. Dr. Truett has traveled the world over on Baptist business, is fond of saying: "I love everybody."

As an orator, George Truett has been compared with Bryan, Henry Grady, the great Baptist Evangelist Charles Haddon Spurgeon. Last week, after his 50,000 Baptists had paraded down Atlanta's Peachtree Street, with flags, bands and detachments of troops.* Baptist Truett opened the Alliance congress in the baseball stadium, from which the Atlanta Crackers had retired for a week. He led off: "As Baptists from around the encircling globe are gathered in the beautiful, forward-looking and nobly hospitable city of Atlanta. . . ."Launching into a lengthy comparison between Baptist and Roman Catholic beliefs, he summed up his own by saying: "The Baptist message is non-sacerdotal, non-sacramentarian and nonecclesiastical. Its teaching is that the one High Priest for sinful humanity has entered into the holy place for all, that the veil is forever rent in twain, that the mercy seat is uncovered and open to all, and that the humblest soul in all the world, if he be truly penitent, may enter with all boldness and cast himself upon Christ."

More succinctly, Atlanta's Mayor Hartsfield, a fellow churchman, summed up the belief and spirit cf the Baptist congress: "It's great to be a Baptist!"

*This year the Northern and Southern Baptist Conventions registered objections to the use of troops "to honor any ecclesiastical leader."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.