Something Christian in Vermont:

North Bennington, VT. – After three decades as a home to pigeons rather than parishioners, a 175-year-old stone church with Presbyterian roots is once again filled with song on a warm Sunday morning. This time around, however, the brand of faith carries a new tune, one that would be more familiar in Mississippi than Vermont.

The story is about “Hallelujah religion,” intelligently told by Christian Science Monitor — bringing “a passionate brand of faith that emphasizes saving souls.”

Nothing bloodless or overly cerebral, you see.  And I speak as a former Jesuit, inevitably branded as overly cerebral.

There’s laying on of hands and an altar call, as in some RC churches throughout the U.S. there is adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.  This adoration is a reaching back for what was thought authentic but was expelled from the worship scene for no good reason — or at least none that was explained to Catholic pew-sitters, though strategically placed experts, on liturgical commissions and the like, had their reasons, we can be sure. [A careful reader had me putting the Blessed Sacrament in Baptist churches.  Did not mean to say that.]

Back to Vermont evangelicals, Southern Baptists have 37 congregations, up from 17 in eight years, plus 24 new ones in neighboring New Hampshire in ten years.  Assemblies of God have six new ones in the two states since 2006.

Vermont has the appearance of no-go territory for such religionists, 34% being unchurched, per Trinity College’s American Religious Identification Survey.  So evangelicals have invaded with volunteers, as they do in Africa and Eastern Europe, filled with audacity of hope.

Theirs is a “roll-up-the-sleeves-and-help-my-community” approach, per the S. Baptist point man in Vermont, where a certain discretion is expected, noted the Monitor writer, G. Jeffery MacDonald.  So controversy is not their mode.

At Capstone, a recent Sunday scripture came from Romans 1, where the Apostle Paul renders sexual impurity as a sign of God’s wrath. But Pastor Steadman’s homily emphasizes how God answers prayer and builds compassion among the faithful.

You don’t have to hit people on the head anyhow; so good luck to these Bible-thumpers.