My earliest memories of Sunday worship are rooted in the simple Rawhide Primitive Baptist church just outside Keokee, Virginia. Most people today would find this tradition unfamiliar. No musical instruments were present. The men and women sat on different sides of the building. The singing was a slow wailing melody line (pretty much the same melody was used for all songs) with a "liner" cantillating the lyric phrases -- and all of this in the voicing used in Celtic and traditional Appalachian music.
One memory of those years that also seems to have gone the way of the dodo was the ongoing presence of children in worship. Look down any pew and you'd see adults, old people, teenagers, and children. Sure, some of children wiggled and there was a pretty steady stream of young ones pleading to take a trip to the outhouse (yep, when I said "primitive," I meant it).
Today, in American evangelical churches, families happily wave good-bye to one another as soon as they walk into the lobby, each group scurrying off to their own made-to-order education and worship experiences.
