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I realized that one thing that makes television evangelists appear so untrustworthy to the uninitiated is their penchant for addressing their mass, anonymous audiences in such familiar ways, as if they were bosom friends and confidants. But experiencing a church like Shawmut River, I wondered how they could ever do otherwise if they sought to appeal to people churched in congregations like this.

Shawmut River had the feel of village life, yet its members were drawn from all over the Worcester area, some driving as much as forty-five minutes to attend. If it was a community, it was not one anchored in a neighborhood. Indeed, some members had been attending less than a year, and some, I would see, were just passing through. How was this village like atmosphere possible under these conditions? How viable, or durable, could such a community be in late-twentieth-century urban America?

While Shawmut River's village atmosphere appealed to me in some ways, it grated against my sensibilities in others. The intimate tone of spoken prayer, Frank's personal confession to his children and the sentimentality of Scott and Sue's anthem—all these, whatever emotional tugs they had, caused me to wince. For many like me, religion should be more formal and permit greater privacy in people's experience of God. But those who came to Shawmut River had no difficulty acclimating themselves to its personal, down, home atmosphere. Though they spoke of many life changes engendered by being saved and coming to a Bible-believing church, this was never one. Instead, most spoke of feeling right at home at Shawmut River, or at a similar fundamentalist church they had first attended, as soon as they walked through the door.

On the other hand, some who had happened upon mainline Protestant churches during their spiritual search spoke of being turned off by an atmosphere they found "phony" or "unfriendly," as one newly saved ex-Catholic described his experience at First Baptist Church on the town green. "Pastor," he explained to Frank at a Bible study in his home, "I hate to sound bad, but I saw your church as the poor man's church and First Baptist as the rich man's. I can sneak in there, but I can't into yours."

These experiences suggested that something quite distinct from fundamentalist or evangelical culture predisposed members to this kind of sociability, where the boundaries between public and private were drawn differently from in the churches I knew, where people had to be publicly recognized, or a pastor readily singled out members of the congregation to joke with, or an anthem took the form of a love song to Christ. Why did these people, whether raised Catholic, Lutheran or in no faith whatsoever, feel immediately at home at Shawmut River, while others found such a climate immediately distasteful?

Excerpted from Spirit and Flesh by James M. Ault, Jr. Copyright © 2004 by James M. Ault, Jr.. Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Copyright © 2004 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Spirit and Flesh is available from Amazon.com and other book retailers.

More information is available from the publisher.

Reviews elsewhere include:

Welcome stranger | Liberal discovers friends in a fundamentalist church (Houston Chronicle, Sept. 24, 2004)

Getting down to fundamentals | 20-year study of working-class Christianity shuns cliché (San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 19, 2004)

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October (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48