In the small, South Carolina town where I grew up, everyone knew everyone else. It was a community where the entire town helped to raise its children. We all attended church on Sunday and knew what God expected of us from an early age. I feel very fortunate to have grown up in such a place, surrounded by so many people who loved me.

The church I attended, from age three until I was twenty, was an old fashioned, Southern Baptist Church. The pastor was a wonderful man whom we all loved dearly. His sermons were quite typical of the Baptist Churches in the nineteen-fifties. He always chose his topics right form the verses in the Bible with great emphasis placed on Satan and Hell. He delivered his sermons with "fire and brimstone." It was a certainty that you had better be good or you were going to wind up down there in an awfully hot place.

Now, this was scary news for a small child, so I learned, at an early age, to be afraid of God. However, I did not learn to love Him. As a child, the fear .....