Salty Saints

Sitting in the one room log cabin hidden behind the giant fence of bamboo, Will D. Campbell spit tobacco juice into the spittoon. I was sitting across from him wearing blue jeans, a flannel shirt and cowboy boots. He was dressed like a Puritan, all in black including a felt hat. Large glasses rested on top of his large nose. We were talking about church and I’d just asked him if he attended when he spit before answering.

“You mean to those Steeple things?” he replied.

I laughed. Will is one of the most interesting people that I’ve ever met. He is famously many things. He is a graduate of Yale Divinity School; worked closely with Martin Luther King, Jr., with the World Council of Churches, and as Chaplain to the Klu Klux Klan after Martin was assassinated (he was trying to love his enemies).

He then quit all of this and wrote a book, “Brother to a Dragonfly” about his experiences and theology, and it was a National Book Award finalist. He kept writing books and giving speeches and became a minor prophet of the Southern Baptist (who have produced only one major prophet --- Clarence Jordan).

And he hung around cool people like Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and Tom T. Hall. They gathered together most weekends to play music and talk. Will was their Chaplain.

We’d met several months earlier through a mutual friend and Will had made the trek to Louisville, Kentucky and we made the Seminary folks mad by not telling them. He spoke at Jefferson Street Baptist Chapel where I was employed as a professional Christian (getting paid to do what I asked others to do for free).

He showed up with a guitar dressed like a Puritan and stared his sermon by singing “Red Neck, White Socks and Blue Ribbon Beer.” Then he sat down and talked about people being church to each other and that buildings are not required. Every radical Seminarian and a lot of homeless people were howling in the audience.

The Seminary paid good money to have him come do the same thing several weeks later though they remained miffed at me (I seemed to always be in trouble there).

So I’d made the trek to Mt. Juliet Tennessee because my first book was about to be published and I was asking the famous author if he would write the preface. He did and his name is bigger on the cover of “The Society of Salty Saints” than mine. It ended up being a very successful book telling the story of a rag tag congregation comprised of homeless people, addicts, hookers and radical seminarians.

After that Will called me one time and asked if I’d ever heard of “The Committee of Southern Churchmen”? Of course, I was a radical seminarian! It was a group of seven different clergy from seven different brands of faith who tried to influence things, especially during the Civil Rights Movement.

“Good,” Will said “then call this number collect and ask them to accept the charges.”

“OK,” I said, because it was Will D. freekin Campbell.

So I dialed and asked the operator who asked whoever answered the phone if they would accept the charges for a collect call from Micheal Elliott.

There was a long pause, a snort, a loud burp, the sound of ice in a glass and then a man’s voice said, “Yes.”

Then he hung up.

I called Will back and told him. “That’s Great!” he said, “You’re in!” Then he hung up.

So I tell you all of that to tell you this.

I’m sitting on my beloved back deck remembering these things. Salt from the ocean hangs in the air. My feet are bare and I’m seriously considering finding a hula-hoop today because that is the kind of thing that people who live on Tybee Island do.

At Bar-Church a couple of weeks ago, my friend Johnny O, who is one of the greatest heathens ever to preach was preaching. The Church takes place in a bar that is somehow converted into a church for an hour. There is no Steeple. At the end of his remarks Johnny O said something like “Don’t let anybody tell that this isn’t a real church. It is! And those people are full of crap.”

Johnny O channeled Will. D. Campbell.

Who knew?

So Harry Chapin’s “All My Life’s A Circle” is playing on Pandora on my I-Phone. And I sit here with my feet propped on the deck and find myself nodding. I started with Salty Saints in Louisville. It was a different brand of salt, trying to preserve things and such.

Now it’s salt that sticks to your skin and works its way into your veins.

But it’s the people regardless of the kind of salt. Most all are Saints who do church in the oddest of ways and in the strangest of places. And you can’t help but love them. As you feel loved.