The South/religion: A Church That Belongs

Nashville is a church town. It is the South's Protestant Vatican, a center of denominational agencies and bureaucracies, and the home of more than 700 churches, including two that call themselves First Baptist. The one in the modernistic new building near the Tennessee state capitol is formally named First Baptist Church, Capitol Hill. Organized in 1844, its first pastor was an ex-slave who had been a janitor in the other First Baptist Church and had been instructed in theology by its pastor. Most of the 565 members of the Capitol Hill Church are...

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