My family

For rather different reasons from those outlined by Phil Waugh in an earlier article on this blog, my great-great-great grandmother Mary Seaton also wished she was an Anglican.

Mary and her husband Daniel arrived in Australia in 1853. They settled in the western district of NSW and, although they were Baptists, they attended an Anglican church as there were no Baptist churches in the area.

Despite their regularity in worship they were informed that if any of their children died they could not be buried in the church cemetery, as they had not been christened. Infant and child mortality being what it was in those days Mary Seaton arranged for her children to be christened at the Anglican church in Kelso. In time a Baptist work was established in the area and Mary and Daniel were foundation members at the Orange Baptist Church.

There was a period in my life when I wished I were in the Uniting church. It seemed to me that prospects for women in ministry in our denomination were so dismal that the most fruitful option for them was to join the uniting church. Although I had no vocation for the ministry myself I wanted to identify with a denomination that affirmed women’s place in every aspect of church life.

However, even as I was flirting with feminist theology on the Uniting Church campus, I was also listening to Dr Graeme Chatfield’s lectures in Church History at Morling College. As the story of the Anabaptists unfolded, I realised that the struggle to give expression to the ideal of Christian liberty was noble, costly and by no means resolved.

There are therefore two aspects to my decision to remain a Baptist. The first is the ideal. I can’t think of anything better than to explore the limits of what it means to be a free believer and to do that in the company of other believers. Where Baptist churches adhere to principles of congregational government, a believer is free to flourish in whatever ministry God has called him or her to exercise.

The second aspect is more personal. I think about my family and what being Baptist meant to them. There is a portrait of my great-great grandfather Henry Warburton in the Millthorpe Museum. He is wearing what appears to be a Lodge Medallion of some kind. I’m speculating, but my guess is that it represents the Temperance Lodge at Spring Hill (still standing) that the Baptists established there.

I think about my great grandfather Horace Warburton who, although he was a farmer during the Great Depression, was also an ardent supporter of denominational outreach activities.

My nanna was Edith Pickersgill. She was a great cook. It was said that, when the Millthorpe Show was on, you needed to be early for dinner to get on the Baptist Table. Edith and her sister Hilda were famous in the district for their Cream Puffs.

My own parents, June and Arthur Pickersgill, (whose stories are not yet complete) have been great church members in whatever church they have attended. They have both been active in Sunday School, youth work, church administration hospitality and pastoral support.

How could I walk away from any of that? Could these people, and others like them, have flourished as they did in a different denomination?

Kristine Morrison is a midwife who attends Ashfield Baptist Church in Sydney.