Who are we?   Clockwise from top: Matthew Giuffrida, Jitsuo Morikawa, Martin Luther King, Jr., Harold Stassen, Jose Ortiz, Helen Barret Montgomery.

What kind of Baptists are we?

Snake handlers? Not recently. Slain in the Spirit? Not always. Teetotaling, judgmental sourpusses? Well, not all of us.

One thing we can say for sure. We're not perfect. We're people of many races, ethnic groups and nationalities, striving to live out our faith in Jesus Christ.

We don't always succeed. Then again, neither did our mothers and fathers in faith. But, like them, we pray for the courage to be faithful.

Who are our parents in faith? There are many, and most of them you've never heard of.  But they include a famous preacher who styled himself a drum major for justice. A woman whose love for the Bible led her to translate it into easy-to-read English. A Brooklyn pastor from Puerto Rico whose quiet testimony to Latinos and Anglos led him to become the 'Godfather' of American Baptist Hispanic ministries. A famous politician who decided he'd rather be right than be President of the United States. A Japanese American who spent the first months of his marriage in a World War II detention camp in California, but whose forgiving spirit led him to become chief evangelist for American Baptists. And an unassuming layman who helped resettle 90,000 refugees into the U.S.

None of them were members of our congregation but they set high standards for us all. When we ask ourselves what kind of Baptists we try to be, we think of them.

Join us. We'll all try together.