The following booklet by the Rev John B Johnson is presented here with the kind permission of Don Donald, one of the Directors of Mt Moriah Church. There is no date on the booklet. A transcription follows the image of each page.
receive him into membership by proxy as he felt that he would die in battle. He was severely wounded, but returned to worship in the church where he had found God. The records list the slave members as well as the white members. So great is the spirit of this church that three members refused to withdraw their letters when the services were reduced to one. They are alive, but well advanced in years.
This is no ordinary church. From its womb more than fifty medical doctors were born into the Kingdom of God. Stand on the churchgrounds at homecoming, and you will see them. Here is a brilliant chest surgeon; there is a skilled brain surgeon; yonder is a doctor of internal medicine, and there is a twenty-nine-year-old surgeon, in Navy attire -- all of them at home to attend Mt. Moriah's homecoming.
Walk around the grounds, and you will bump shoulders with industrialists, real estate men, professionals, and some of the top leaders of the South. Over near the door you will find one of the ranking physicians of Alabama's Health Department. To worship in that church is almost like walking down the sacred corridors of "Who's Who in Alabama's Medical History." The Donalds, the Yeldells, the Steens, the Luckies, the Knights, the Kendricks, the Wards, the Thigpens, the Powerses, the Powells and the Scotts are all there. They have come to worship where they first met the Lord.
As one approaches the sanctuary, the massive strength of Norman architecture flashes across the mind. Walking closer, one sees that the Norman gives place to the Georgian style, but minus the gleaming white columns. The red bricks set in a seal of white mortar look like frozen poetry. The stately structure seems to lift its head over the vast expanse as if to say, "This is God's House; let us worship."
Step up two cement steps, and you are in an indentured foyer. In just a few steps, you will be across the threshold, and like a page out of Chaucer's England, the huge beams seem to be bearing the weight of the centuries upon their gnarled shoulders. The corner posts, and the beams were
|
|
Page updated 9 Apr 2007.
