November 20, 2006

Amusing Anecdote (though not for Minister McNamara)

From Schauinger's biography of Stephen T. Badin, here concerning early 1800s revivals in the Midwest:
The revivalist ministers would take most literally a particular text from the Bible and attempt to show their piety and their conversion from sin. The sentence "unless ye become as little children" would move the excited to get out in the aisle and gallop up and down on a stick or to play marbles or to do anything that might convince the Lord that they had now become little children. Another group might be running around on all fours, barking up a tree and exclaiming their success of treeing the Devil. One notable revivalist preacher...leaped out into the audience and started creeping on his belly and moving along on hands and knees, trying to impersonate the Devil, stopping every once in a while in order to get across by crying, "I am the old serpent that tempted Eve!" It was too much and too good. An old man simply couldn't resist the impulse - as McNamara slid past him a heavy boot stomped down on his face and a ringing cry swelled out, "And I am the Woman that crushed him."

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