It seems a bit strange to me, as I look back, that my feeling of kinship was not with the early Christian Church but with the Hebrew people. In fact, it was years later, after considerable study of Paul's Epistles, that I had to come to the conclusion that
gentile, after all, was not a dirty word.
"It is still hard for me to accept as fact that my blood ancestors were gentiles and were until fairly recently painting themselves blue and running around naked. My real ancestors left Ur of the Chaldees with Abraham and wandered in the wilderness with Moses. Add to this strong Biblical heritage the interpretation of it by Calvin, Knox, and the Westminster divines, and you have got one sure foundation beneath your feet. Again, it was amazing to me to learn that to most people Calvinism seems more like the foundations which ladies of my mother's generation used to wear--squeezing all the breath out of you and poking into you every step you take. This, of course, was not my experience. For if the Bible told me who I was, my Presbyterian tradition told me why I was.
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