AUBURN — When members of the Court Street Baptist Church began plotting their 150th anniversary, someone suggested publishing a history.

Instantly, the faces of the anniversary committee fixed on the author in the room, Douglas Hodgkin.

“Everyone looked at me,” said Hodgkin, a retired Bates College professor who has published several local histories. “I said, ‘Sure. Why not?”

The result of that single, inquiring glance is a 210-page book that chronicles one of Lewiston-Auburn’s oldest churches.

The book, titled “The Baptists of Court Street,” covers the church from its formation from two Baptist congregations in the years immediately before the Civil War to present day worries over weak attendance.

To Hodgkin, it was almost all new.

Though he was brought up in Lewiston as a Baptist, he began attending services here five years ago in a search for a conservative message. He was still a newcomer when he joined the anniversary committee.

That changed when he began his work.

He examined old newspapers looking for tidbits. And he combed through the church’s own records for meeting minutes, newsletters and photos. He soon realized he was writing the histories of two churches: the Court Street Free Baptist Church and the Court Street (formerly Spring Street) Baptist Church. The two merged in 1930.

The two churches were breakaways from Lewiston congregations, each deciding that it could thrive on its own in Auburn, according to Hodgkin’s book.

Even before they had buildings of their own, they were active missionaries, Hodgkin said.

During the Civil War, women from the churches made kits of bandage material that were sent to the fighting, rather than to any individual soldiers or Maine units.

Hodgkin’s research painted a portrait of a congregation that emphasized spreading Christianity through mission work abroad, domestically and at home, he said.

The churches became known for helping folks in need, whether it was assisting soldiers fighting the Baptist fight against slavery or aiding people displaced decades later by World War II. The merged church also spent years funding a hospital in Burma.

“There’s a momentum,” Hodgkin said. “Once a tradition is established, it’s easier to keep going.”

Soon after the Civil War, both churches had homes along busy Court Street.

The Spring Street Society’s church went up first at the intersection with Pleasant Street. Less than a decade later, the Free Baptists opened their church on just a few hundred feet away. Only Pleasant Street and the Auburn Public Library separated them.

But it’s the first Court Street Baptist building that remains.

Opening in January 1869, the grand brick building was erected beside the still-new Androscoggin County Building. The church sanctuary featured a long sloping balcony, an 825-pipe organ and a finely decorated arch above the pulpit.

The church spire and bell were apparently erected in 1888, Hodgkin wrote.

Much of his book follows the money spent by the two churches, before and after the merger. Through those records, he followed renovations, including the construction of a basement beneath the current church, begun with machines, continued by hand and finally completed by machine when the manual work proved too daunting.

At every step, Hodgkin relied on the building, comparing archival photos with the church of today.

Past renovations have introduced walls and staircases and a classroom wing. But the brass banister in the hall that leads to the vestry feels like an original touched by generations.

“You’d have these old pictures that would show these large classrooms,” he said. “I can go to those places.”

The church continues to place a high priority on its youth and its missions. A new full-time youth pastor, Jake Henrioulle of Santa Rosa, Calif., is due to begin work in the coming weeks.

And as the upcoming year’s budget is decided, the church’s missions work will again be separated from the church’s operating budget.

Hodgkin, who has attended other churches for 66 of his 71 years, sounded like a lifetime member as he described Court Street traditions in its modest library.

“I probably got acquainted with the church much more rapidly than I would have,” he said.

Then, he really sounded like a Baptist.

“No pun intended, it was the immersion in this church,” he said.

dhartill@sunjournal.com

Copy the Story Link