…it’s rarely for something entirely good. That was, its seems, true also a hundred years ago. Scott Lamb here at Southern Seminary just sent me an archived article from the New York Times from 1900.
The Times took interest in the “fashionable Third Avenue” neighborhood of downtown Louisville being upset about Walnut Street Baptist Church’s building program, which was right up to the sidewalk, blocking the “beautiful view” of the homeowners there.
One homeowner complained to Walnut Street pastor T.T. Eaton about the project, saying it would depreciate his property. Eaton reportedly told the man that that was fine, because the church intended to buy his property “when it got cheap.”
How’s that for missional?
For my thoughts on the rascally, complicated Eaton, see this from an address at Union University’s Baptist Identity conference in 2007. The paper can also be accessed in Microsoft Word format in the papers section of this site.
