For me Christmas is mostly about visiting family that I don’t see the rest of the year. We had good visits with my in-laws and also with my family.

I sat up very late on Christmas Eve talking with my dad after the rest of the family went to sleep. In the past we have never spent much time talking about personal things but he now was willing to share some things that he had never felt he could. The whole thing started when I told him I had just finished reading a book by former president Carter. He then asked if I would loan him the book because he had felt some connection with Carter. I agreed, but in the back of my mind I thought that my dad wouldn’t like it since Carter spoke about his liberal theological views and his rejection of the southern Baptists (my dad had been a Southern Baptist pastor for nearly 50 years). But before I could even mention anything about the book, my dad made the comment that he felt the SBC had locked out people like him and his friends. My ears perked up, because I wasn’t sure exactly what my dad meant, but it was the same language that Carter used repeatedly. My dad explained that he felt no person or institution could tell another man how to interpret scripture and what doctrines or theological ideas were correct. My dad went on to explain how the SBC had been doing that for a long time and many of his friends from seminary had been rejected. He said that 13 of his seminary professors had been asked to resign while he was in school for having progressive theological ideals (keep in mind this would have been in the 50’s at a very conservative school). WOW! I guess we had never really talked about it. I had just assumed he was firmly entrenched on the fundamentalist side of most arguments but I really had no reason to make that assumption. I know my dad is conservative in many ways, but I feel bad that I had painted such a narrow picture of him.

My mind began to race through some past memories to try and make sense of those comments. I remember that my dad’s best friend from seminary had become a pastor that was heavily involved in programs to help the poor in the northeast. I remember that he had to change denominations but I’m not sure. I’m sure he was probably more progressive, but I just didn’t know what that meant when I was 8. I remembered how my dad had been in hot water with his deacons because he was focused on bringing in kids from the poor areas of town and it caused friction with some of the older and more prestigious members of the church. But I never really remember his mentioning anything theologically that would be progressive. I begin to wonder if dad would be open to discussions about some basic theological ideas that I was now questioning. I decided not to dig too deep this time.

From there, dad told me several stories of dealing with racism and class discrimination as a pastor in rural Georgia. He told me a story about how a church member knocked on his door one Saturday afternoon and informed my mom that her son was out in the front yard of the church playing with a little black boy. My mom told him that she knew very well who her son was playing with and it was perfectly fine. I remember that the boy’s father was the church janitor. My dad met him while leading a weekly prison ministry and then hired him after his release. My dad never spoke much of these things, but he acted on them. It warmed my heart to hear it and confirmed some of my own needs to question the views of the institutional church about many other issues.

Then I got a real shock… My dad never really talked about his own father much and I never knew him because he died before I was born, but this weekend dad told me something shocking about my grandfather. Dad was in his twenties when my grandfather died. While waiting at the house before the funeral someone delivered a wreath from the local KKK. Then, after searching through my grandfather’s wallet, dad discovered his membership card. He had suspected as much, but had never known for sure until then. My dad said he threw away the wreath, burned the membership card, and never spoke about it again.

Eventually the irony hit me that in the midst of the joy in learning about my father’s tolerance and progressive views, he had revealed his horrible experience of learning about his own father’s hidden life of bigotry. I never thought of my father as a rebel, but looking back on my lifetime of rebelling against him, it is comforting to know he has spent a lifetime rebelling against his father. I feel like it was the beginning of a new chapter in our relationship. I’m looking forward to our next conversation.