A parable about organized religion

Organized religion has taken on an increasingly disorganized, fractured appearance in the last few years. The faithful of many traditional denominations have been divided into warring camps. In The Convention, Will Campbell addresses the issues in the form of a parable, the oldest known form of story-telling.

In Campbell’s parable, Dorcas Rose McBride emerges as a candidate for the presidency of the Federal Baptist Church at an upcoming convention. Her strongest qualification is an exemplary life of decency. She carries scripture, not in a briefcase or on cassette, but in her heart. Speeches to the convention by this Mississippi woman are filled with simple truths: allusions to gardening, country politics in the South, parenting, and how Palmolive used to smell before they changed the formula.

Only Dorcas knows what the Federal Baptist presidency means to the true church. She has an inspired plan for the presidential gavel that no woman has ever wielded. And Will Campbell unfolds her plan with vision and humor,evoking more than a few tears along the way.

Whatever your religious persuasion, whatever our thoughts on God and on humankind, this story will intrigue you, inform you, and inspire you.

WILL D. CAMPBELL is the award-winning author of Brother to a Dragonfly, The Glad River, Forty Acres and a Goat, Cecelia’s Sin, and Providence. He was presented the 1994 Tennessee Governor’s Award for the Arts and the Presidential Awardin the Humanities by President Clinton. Born in Mississippi, he earned his B.D. degree at Yale in 1952. A pastor for a short time, he became a “steeple dropout,” a preacher without a pulpit. From 1963 he was preacher and sometime director of the Committee of Southern Churchmen. As publisher of Katallagete, he once wrote what some consider his one and only sermon: “It is doubtful that the church will ever do anything significant until we proclaim the Gospel.”

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