Saved by Grace, Liberal in Mercy

By Mike Cowan PhD

In proud tradition of the Southern storyteller, author Mike Cowan shares stories from his life that have molded him into the rarest of creatures, a White, evangelical Christian and a bleeding-heart, liberal Democrat.

From conversion as a child through spiritual formation as an adult, Cowan recounts the struggles he has faced in a church that was founded in defense of the evil of slavery and the consequent vestiges of systemic racism, in a church that has increasingly dallied with the chauvinism of Christian nationalism, and in a church that is currently in a season of reckoning about congregant sexual abuse by clergy and the disgrace of deception by executive denominational leadership.

Through it all, from the enduring influence of parents and grandparents, yellow-dog Democrats all, Cowan details his commitment of the next season of his life in support of voting rights, public education, gun control and the science of climate change.

The longer we live, the more we understand life is a delicate balance of competing forces. In Saved by Grace, Liberal in Mercy, Cowan navigates one of our greatest cultural divides and lives to celebrate it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: May 29, 2024
• ISBN: 9798385008568

Mike Cowan PhD

Mike Cowan earned a BS in English Education from the University of Missouri, Columbia; an MA in Teaching English from Southeast Missouri State University, Cape Girardeau; and a PhD in Educational Leadership from Saint Louis University. He taught in Missouri public schools for forty years, eighteen as high school English teacher, speech and debate coach, director of theatre and twenty-two as high school principal. In retirement, Cowan has divided his time between his beloved hometown of Oak Ridge, MO, and his second home in the historic Central West End of the city of St. Louis. Cowan professed his belief in Jesus Christ at age ten and has been an active layperson in the Southern Baptist Church throughout his life.

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Copyright © 2024 Mike Cowan, PhD

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Unless specifically credited or quoted in secondary sources, all cited Scripture is from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition, National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States, Zondervan, 2021.

ISBN: 979-8-3850-0854-4 (sc)

ISBN: 979-8-3850-0855-1 (hc)

ISBN: 979-8-3850-0856-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024905932

WestBow Press rev. date: 05/20/2024

For the love of God—past, present, future

For the love of Family—

Past—Betty June, Clark, Girtie, Walter,

Katie, Alice, Gene, Madge, John

Present—Kevin, Kathy, Jason, Kim, Jeff, Susana

Future—Jayden

For the love of Church—past, present, future

The Letter to the Hebrews, 10:23-25

Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering,

for he who has promised is faithful. And let us consider how

to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting

to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one

another, and all the more as you the see the Day approaching.

Contents

Chapter 1     For All Have Sinned

Chapter 2     Let the Boy Do It

Chapter 3     You Were the Chair Last Night

Chapter 4     Who’s the Honky?

Chapter 5     Lightning Bugs and City Lights

Chapter 6     There Is No Difference

Chapter 7     From Every Tribe and Nation

Chapter 8     A Light unto My Path

Chapter 9     Acts of Mercy

Chapter 10   It’s All about the Gospel

Chapter 11   The Two Greatest Commandments

Works Cited

Chapter 1

For All Have Sinned

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Is … Daddy a … sinner?

As a nine-year-old boy, I struggled even to say the word as my question churned and battered the outer limits of my understanding. It was shortly after the second Friday night of a two-week revival meeting. Great-Uncle John was preaching at my home church in Southeast Missouri, First Baptist of Oak Ridge, a rural crossroads of 176 friends and neighbors, and possibly, three times as many free-range chickens, cats, and dogs. Uncle John, a Southern Baptist pastor, evangelist, and radio preacher from Madisonville, Kentucky, was a majestically gifted orator and an absolute master at flawlessly quoting lengthy passages from the Holy Bible, only and always, the King James Version, edited by Rev. C. I. Scofield, DD.

Each night of the revival, Uncle John had overfilled the pulpit of my home church, dressed in what seemed to me his endless wardrobe of meticulously pressed, pin-striped, double-breasted suits with heavily-starched, white shirts and color-coordinated ties, knotted and dimpled perfectly. As he sat on the rostrum with crossed legs, poised to preach, the spit shine of his shoes reflected the light from the frosted antique globes swinging from the vaulted wooden ceiling of our church and well complemented his gentleman’s sheer hosiery, which only preachers, bankers, and college professors would dare wear in public in Cape Girardeau County. Uncle John, the Reverend J. W. (John William) Robison, had only a fourth-grade education and had surrendered to the divine call of God to preach the Gospel while working in the pits of the coal mines of rural Kentucky. I can still today hear the mysterious awe in his voice as he repeated his all but epic battle with God before he finally submitted to the calling of the Holy Spirit to preach the Word of God.

Uncle John recounted how he would be at work by himself in the very bottom of the mines, and gradually, his physical awareness, his inward thoughts, and even his audible dialogue with himself, would shift from the handle of his pick and the wall of coal before him and plant him squarely behind the pulpit of the nearby Baptist church, situated on what was known locally as Baptist Hill. He would physically shake his head to knock the vision of that pulpit and of that country church out of his consciousness. He would desperately will himself to think about other things and force himself to attack the coal with a more ferocious intensity of sweat and jarring pain with each strike of his pick. Even so, again and again, slowly but surely, in his mind’s eye, he would return to that pulpit, to that church, to preaching that Word. To my childhood discomfort, Uncle John even confessed he went so far as to force himself to conjure impure fantasies of sexual encounters to block the pull of the Spirit of God. Still, slowly but surely, even the impure images would fade away and mysteriously transplant him into standing squarely behind that sacred desk on Baptist Hill.

After days had turned into weeks of repeated struggle, there came a moment when Uncle John, all alone, fell to his knees in the bottom of that Kentucky coal mine and said yes to what he unabashedly believed was God’s divine call to preach. He repeated softly yet audibly, I only have a fourth-grade education. I don’t understand and I sure can’t explain most of what I read in the Bible. I don’t have preacher English or preacher clothes, but if preach is what You want me to do, that’s clearly what I am gonna have to do. From that moment on his private Damascus Road in rural Kentucky, Uncle John said he never looked back other than to recount to all who were willing to listen to his testimony of his divine call to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Yet today, I can see the joyful tears trickle down his face and hear the abiding humility in his voice as he would repeat what surely became a cherished family legend.

During my adolescent days of the 1950s and ’60s, annual spring and fall revival meetings were standard fare in my Southern Baptist Church and throughout much of the evangelical circuit of America’s Bible Belt. Night after night, the guest song leader would lead the congregation through the final stanza, and then he would invite everyone, Stand together and sing the chorus of ‘Revive Us Again’ one more time, but sing it like you mean it this time. Afterwards, Uncle John would all but leap behind that pulpit, straighten that double-breasted suit, push those wire-rimmed glasses back from the tip of his nose, and tell one of the much-anticipated jokes of the night that every good Southern Baptist evangelist employed to win the attention and favor of his congregation before announcing his Biblical text for the evening. A favorite first joke of Uncle John’s, at which I still lovingly and respectfully smile, went something like this:

Sister Sadie was sitting on the front row with her Bible in her lap and responding to every point the visiting evangelist made. The old preacher said, All you sinners who sit in church on Sunday and keep that bottle of homemade hooch in the barn for a bedtime nip are sure enough dancin’ in the devil’s playground.

Sister Sadie lifted her right hand to heaven and shouted, Amen. Thank You, Jesus!

The old preacher next said, All you sinners who sit in church on Sunday and then slip down to the Happy Hollow on Saturday night to dance the floozy with your arms around another man’s wife, or husband as the case may be, you, too, are dancin’ in the devil’s playground.

Sister Sadie now lifted both hands and shouted again, Amen and Amen. Thank You and Thank You, Lord Jesus.

All you sinners who sit in church on Sunday and keep that can of snuff in the bottom kitchen drawer to fill your lip with the devil’s ash are just like all the others dancin’ in that old devil’s playground.

Sister Sadie abruptly transformed her facial expression from spiritual rapture to total disdain, shifted uncomfortably, closed her Bible, grabbed her pocketbook, and whispered to Sister Ida beside her, Well, he’s stopped preachin’ and gone to meddlin’ in people’s business now.

Of course, Uncle John’s point, even in that opening joke, was sin tends to be very personal.

Uncle John was an old-school Bible preacher to the last breath he drew on this earth. He would divide his main text evenly into his major points of emphasis, and each point would be reinforced by multiple but related passages of Scripture from the Old Testament and the New. By the time I was old enough to begin to listen to him preach intently, it seemed to me that he had most of the Bible committed to memory. He would quote one passage, and it would remind him of another and then another and then another. He would set that thick, old, and worn Scofield Bible on its spine in search of a related passage, and more often than not, it would essentially fall open to the desired text that he was already quoting from memory. That Bible falling open to the exact passage he was already quoting would lead Uncle John to pause only long enough to smile broadly at the congregation and shout, Praise God!

Forty-five to fifty minutes later, Uncle John would call the guest song leader back to the rostrum to begin the invitation hymn Just as I Am or Softly and Tenderly, with Wherever He Leads I’ll Go on deck and ready to flow if the Spirit so moved among the people. Over the music, Uncle John would unleash another ten to fifteen minutes of impassioned pleas for one and all to confess our sins and to receive the unconditional love of Jesus as our Lord and Savior. I can still see him step down from that low rostrum, pace the front of the church, and move up the center aisle and back to the front with his index finger in that old Bible. With sweat dripping from his chin, a mysterious blend of a compassionate smile and a stern admonition on his face, and authentic tears in his eyes, he would passionately plead for one and all to come to Jesus just as you are.

On that final Friday night, Dad shocked me beyond my limited comprehension as he squeezed by me on my aisle seat and left our shared pew during the very first verse of Just as I Am. He rushed to the altar and grasped Uncle John’s hand as they both knelt at the front of our church. My attention was abruptly jerked away from Dad and Uncle John on their knees to my maternal grandmother, Uncle John’s younger sister, Katie Ethel, who had her hands lifted in the air and was shouting aloud, Thank You, Jesus! Hallelujah! That Friday night scene has remained an indelible moment frozen in time for me that I shall remember until the day I die.

My mind was a whirlwind of overlapping questions while Dad continued to kneel and pray with Uncle John at the altar. Didn’t Uncle John say it was sinners who should make their way to the front? Did Dad kneeling with Uncle John make Dad a sinner? How could my dad, who could do no wrong in my naïve eyes, even possibly be a sinner? Why were Mom and her sister, our beloved aunt, Alice May, crying? And why on earth was Grandma Katie yelling, in church of all places? My world was in chaos.

From my earliest possible memory, Mother Betty June took me and my younger brother, Kevin, to church Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday evening and to every special event from Vacation Bible School to Sunbeams to Royal Ambassadors to potluck suppers, and ice cream socials in between. In those earliest days of our family life, Dad would occasionally join us on Sunday morning, but that was about as often as he would go.

I remember wondering why my maternal great-grandmother, Girtie, who lived just five houses down the road, and my paternal grandfather, Walter, who lived immediately across the street, would regularly ride to church with us, but Dad would do so only rarely and on special occasions. Great-Grandma would be in her lace-up black Sunday shoes with thick heels and her black straw hat with a single white carnation on the side. Grandpa would be in his maroon tie, thin-striped, long-sleeved, white shirt—winter and summer—and pleated Sunday trousers, held secure by both belt and suspenders, and sporting his Sunday hat. They would both walk to our house, sit on the front porch in nice weather, and wait for Mom to get me, Kevin, and herself ready. Then, Mom would drive us all, but not often Dad, to church. I would look out of the rear window of our Chevy as we pulled away from home and watch Dad wave from the porch as he stepped through the front door and back into our house as we drove away. It was a familiar, although most curious, routine.

Back home from the revival meeting that Friday evening, I sat in the glow of a full moon on the wooden steps of our front porch, a bit stunned and thoroughly confused. Mom slowly opened the screen door and settled into the red and white metal lawn chair just behind me. Are you oaky? Mom eventually asked softly.

I don’t know, I responded even more softly.

Immediately, Mom quietly and calmly explained how thankful she was. Your daddy made his public profession of belief in Jesus tonight. She went on to explain that was why she and Aunt Alice May were crying, Grandma Katie was shouting in church, and all the adults at church were happy and hugging one another after the final amen. Your daddy got saved tonight. Do you understand that, Mikey? Mom asked.

Sort of, I lied.

Is there anything you want to ask me?

Hesitantly, holding back tears, I painfully asked, Is … Daddy a … sinner?

Yes, he is Mikey. We all are, Mom replied softly but without hesitation. Listen carefully, tonight, Daddy asked Jesus to forgive every sin he has ever committed, just like I asked Jesus to forgive me when I was about your age and just like, I pray every day, He will forgive you and Kevin someday soon. Jesus did exactly what He promises He will do in the Bible. Jesus forgave Daddy for all his sins once and forevermore.

After we sat silently in the soft glow of the moon for several more moments, Any more questions? Mom asked.

I shook my head no, and Mom told me it was time for bed.

Before she stepped inside the door, Mom reached down and rubbed her hand gently across my shoulders, and said, Listen to me, now, Mikey. The most important thing I want you to know—and promise me you will always remember this—is that Jesus loves you even more than I do and even more than Daddy does. Love just doesn’t get any better than that in this old world. You understand?

Yes, ma’am.

Always remember?

Yes, ma’am. Always remember.

Once the lights were off and the old oscillating fan was sounding its familiar groan from its perch on the kitchen stool in our bedroom, I lay awake for what seems now like the whole night, trying to understand all that had happened at church just a few hours earlier. I was glad Jesus had forgiven Dad and Mom, but then I did begin to wonder, What about me and Kevin?

Our spring revival meeting ended the following Sunday evening, and Uncle John and his wife, Aunt Madge, stopped by our house early Monday morning to say good-bye as they left Great-Grandma’s house and headed home to Madisonville. The following Wednesday evening, when Mom started getting us ready for church after our routinely quick Wednesday night supper, I noticed Dad was changing out of his Toughnut gray work clothes, which he wore to the store every day of my entire life, and into his Sunday church clothes. Without a single word of explanation, Dad went with us to church that Wednesday evening as he did the following Sunday morning and Sunday evening and again the following Wednesday and so on for the rest of my childhood.

As I recall, only one thing was said as we all climbed into the car that Wednesday evening, where this time Dad was behind the wheel. As Grandpa Cowan settled into the back seat next to me and Grandma Robison, he squeezed my knee gently and said softly to Dad, Proud of you, son. Dad just nodded in silence.

Later that spring, I was sitting at Dad’s big rolltop desk in the back corner of our family’s country store, Cowan Hardware, rolling coins into paper sleeves for the weekly bank deposit and listening to the farmers and other Oak Ridge old-timers talk about a lot of things, which I realized even then, I probably should not have been hearing.

Suddenly, I stopped listening when I noticed an open Bible pushed toward the back of Dad’s desk under the wooden slots where he kept his important store papers and records. From that first day I noticed it, that open Bible was a permanent fixture on Dad’s desk until the day he closed the store for the last time and retired Cowan Hardware forever.

Dad was not a man who talked openly about his personal life, or about his feelings on any topic for that matter, and his belief and personal faith in God were certainly no exceptions. However, I did hear bits and pieces of conversation between Mom and Dad as she washed and he dried the supper dishes most every night, as was their routine throughout my childhood. There were some rather lively debates between the two of them about statements, stories, and people in the Bible. Mom, as a professed believer in Jesus from her childhood and a Sunday school teacher all her adult life, would answer Dad’s initial questions, and then Dad would ask her more questions about her answers. I eventually came to understand that Dad was asking Mom questions from his reading of that Bible on his desk at the store.

My parents had regular, and often animated, debates during those dishwashing symposiums, with Dad always pushing Mom beyond the standard Sunday-school-teacher answers with his desire to know why, how, and more about the Bible. Decades later, as I sat on the front pew of our home church beside my niece, Kim, and my two nephews, Jason and Jeff, as they waited their turns to speak at Mom’s funeral, I recounted those kitchen conversations between Mom and Dad as the congregation sang the chorus of one of Mom’s favorite Gospel songs often performed by the legendary Southern Gospel quartet The Blackwood Brothers:

More, more, about Jesus;

More, tell more, about Jesus.

More of his saving fullness see,

More of His love who died for me.

While Kevin and I were growing up, Mom taught young adult women in Sunday school; however, she also was our junior class teacher, grades 5 and 6, for Vacation Bible School each summer. Like the two-week revivals of that era, Vacation Bible School lasted two weeks every summer—and three weeks for us since we got another week at the local Methodist church, to which Mom surely sent me and Kevin whether or not the two of us thought we needed it.

The summer after that spring revival meeting, on the last day of VBS at our home church on Saturday morning, we older kids remained in the sanctuary with our pastor for what I knew from past years was the annual evangelistic service after the younger kids were dismissed to their classrooms. Rev. Ernest Punch, Brother Ernie to most of us, talked with us calmly, but forthrightly, about what he said was the good news of the Gospel: the birth of Jesus in a manger, the death of Jesus on a cross, the resurrection of Jesus from a grave, and the promise that Jesus would someday come back to earth to gather all those who had professed their belief in Him as their personal Lord and Savior. I had just turned ten years old and pretty much knew the routine from years past, but this year just felt markedly different for me.

While Brother Ernie was telling us about the Gospel, my mind didn’t jump ahead to grape Kool-Aid and home-made cookies and arts and crafts, where we made something only slightly different each year from popsicle sticks and cardboard