The old baptismal pool

Editor's note: The following text is a transcript of a podcast story. To listen to the story, click on the arrow beneath the headline above.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, May 19th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning! I’m Mary Reichard.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: a sacred space. 

For more than 170 years, a quiet, spring-fed pool has helped believers make public professions of faith. Now a new historical marker is drawing fresh attention to the spot. 

Here’s WORLD Senior Writer Kim Henderson.

KIM HENDERSON: Little Bahala Baptist Church in South Mississippi has something few churches can claim: an outdoor baptismal pool. Built in 1850, the spring-fed baptistry is the oldest in the state and possibly the region.

Pastor Andy Delancy showed me the site.

DELANCY: This is the old spring head. I don't know how long this has been here, but you can see the water is clear as it can be. You can see three feet deep down in there.

So there’s a spring, and a few yards away, dug into the ground, there’s a bricked baptistry. It fills with water flowing from the spring, but there is a shut-off valve, and when I visited last November, the baptistry was empty—men from the church were making repairs.

FLOYD: We got just a couple leaks that we want to stop before we put a coat of sealer on this.

That’s David Floyd. He remembers church services in this very spot.

MAN: Walk right down the hill, right down to the baptism right here. There used to be a set of steps that came off down in here…

Floyd himself was baptized in the cool water of the pool when he was 12.

MAN: Summer, July, and you will come out with chill bumps all over you, I promise you.

But the church got an indoor baptistry in 1978. This outdoor pool is rarely used.

MAN: There were was two baptized here, I think in 2014.

Glen Foster doesn’t live in the community now, but his family members were some of the first settlers in the area.

FOSTER: Bout where those pine trees over there goes across at an angle is the old Choctaw Indian boundary line from the Treaty of 1806…

The Foster family owned the land around the church, and they’ve been informal caretakers of the baptismal pool for five generations.

FOSTER: My dad and his 10 siblings, all 11 of them, were baptized in this baptismal pool right here.

AUDIO: [Sound of water splashing]

FOSTER: Touch it, it's like ice water. [KH:All the time?] All the time.

In 1980, the Foster Family restored the grounds.

FOSTER: Hauled in 40 yards of dirt, 20 yards of pea gravel, put a fence around it…

And for the last four decades, they’ve tried to keep it looking nice. 

When one of Glen Foster’s cousins suggested they get a state historical marker for the baptismal pool, the family voted yes. The church approved as well, so they got the Mississippi Department of Archives and History involved.

ELLISON: Only the state authorizes these types of markers, and what makes it distinct from other markers is that it has the green background with the Magnolia at the top.

Caleb Ellison is a program manager for the agency. He says close to 1,400 markers currently dot the state’s landscape.

ELLISON: Markers are primarily paid for and promoted by sponsors, so it's the local community that are giving us the recommendation to make the markers.

The sponsor submits an application, then a team at the Department of Archives and History takes the text that’s proposed for the marker and verifies it.

ELLISON: We use our archives, but we also use newspapers. We ask the sponsors to send us information that they have themselves.

The making of a marker is a six-month process. It happens out of state, in Ohio.

AUDIO: [Sound of shovels]

When I returned to the baptismal pool in April, men with shovels were trying to make a dent in the hard ground near the road.

FOSTER: There's a 3 foot hole there that we're going to put the post down in. We're going to put a little additional concrete there to hold the pole . . .

Glen Foster was there, along with some men from the church. The new marker was, too—weighing in at 80 pounds, wrapped up in Foster’s truck-bed.

When the men finished setting it in place, they covered it with fabric.

FOSTER: When we have the dedication service on the 18th, we will unveil it.

And two weeks later…

AUDIO: [Crowd reacts and claps]

…the unveiling caused just the reaction Foster hoped for.

AUDIO: [Sound of crowd]

The marker dedication drew a crowd. It was a historic event. It was a spiritual event.

FOSTER: I have counted up through all the records I have, 1,003 people from 1850 to 1977 have been baptized in this baptismal pool…

Family member Don Wallace stood before the crowd to pray.

WALLACE: Thank you for every soul who has stepped into these waters, for every tear of repentance and for every song of joy that has echoed in this sacred place. Lord, may this pool continue to be a wellspring of grace for generations to come.

Wallace prayed that the waters of the baptismal pool would serve as a reminder of God’s unchanging love and promise of new life in Christ. It was a prayer 176 years in the making, with a view toward eternity.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kim Henderson in Little Bahala, Mississippi.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.