Weekend Plug-in 🔌

Editor’s note: Every Friday, “Weekend Plug-in” meets readers at the intersection of faith and news. Subscribe now to get this column delivered straight to your inbox. Got feedback or ideas? Email Bobby Ross Jr. at therossnews@gmail.com.

PORTAGEVILLE, Mo. — Just three days after she turned 17, the bride wore a simple white gown that her mother made. She was so nervous that she gashed her leg while shaving that morning.

The groom, barely 19, borrowed a white sport coat from his younger brother. His black tie matched his perfect flattop.

On July 2, 1964, Bob Ross and Judy Nanney exchanged wedding vows in their southeastern Missouri Bootheel hometown.

Long before the simple living-room ceremony 60 years ago, seeds of hard work, Christian faith and commitment to the institution of marriage were planted in both my parents’ hearts.

My father, the third of four children, grew up in a farming family.

My grandfather Lloyd Ross served in World War II and was shot in the face. After the war, Papa worked as a cotton sharecropper and later as a carpenter and commercial fisherman. My grandmother Margaret Ross helped support the family by sewing in a garment factory.

My mother, the middle child of three siblings, grew up in a less stable — but equally loving — family.

My grandfather Earl Nanney, a sweet man who battled mental illness all his adult life, found it difficult to retain a job. My grandmother Edith Nanney dealt with Grandpa’s frequent stints in jail and mental hospitals and her own chronic physical ailments. Through it all, Grandma fought to keep her family together.

From early ages, both my parents picked cotton in Missouri fields.

Dad’s family raised cows and pigs, so the Rosses ate meat more often than the Nanneys. Mom’s family relied on its garden for potatoes, corn and tomatoes.

In both households, belief in Jesus was stressed. In fact, my parents first connected at a teen Bible study.

The young couple enjoyed roller skating, drive-in movies and ice cream cones at a local café.

Dad grew up in the Church of Christ. Some of my earliest memories of Papa and Grandma are on a light blue church bus. Every Sunday, they’d drive all over the countryside, picking up children for worship and teaching them to sing “Jesus Loves Me.”

Mom grew up in the First Baptist Church. I still remember Grandpa — when he wasn’t hospitalized — rising before dawn on Sunday and playing gospel music at an ungodly volume.

He loved my dad but couldn’t resist calling him a “Campbellite.” I can’t recall a day, meanwhile, that I didn’t see Grandma open up her Bible and spend time in God’s word.

While they were dating, Mom and Dad visited each other’s church from time to time.

“I went to church just to be with her,” Dad said.

“But he wouldn’t sing,” Mom said with a laugh — a reference to his concern over the organ and piano used in the Baptist church’s worship.

About six months after they married, Mom stepped forward at a Church of Christ assembly and asked to be baptized for the forgiveness of sins.

“Our lives have certainly been God-centered,” Mom said. “If we didn’t have God to talk to about our kids and our grandkids and ourselves and when terrible things happen, I don’t know what we’d do. I don’t know what people do if they don’t have God.”

Mom and Dad were raised to believe that saying “I do” means forever. Papa and Grandma Ross were married 69 years. Grandpa and Grandma Nanney were married 52 years.

As young adults, my parents spent a year apart as Dad joined the Air Force and served overseas — in Greece — during the Vietnam War.

Dad later studied at the White’s Ferry Road School of Preaching in West Monroe, La., and Freed-Hardeman University in Henderson, Tenn., and became a preacher.

In 1982, Mom and Dad began 25 years of full-time ministry as houseparents at Christ’s Haven for Children in Keller, Texas.

Now retired, they dote on their seven grandchildren and five great-grandchildren and remain madly in love. Dad still preaches at a little country church in Greenwood, Texas, about 55 miles north of Fort Worth.

I thank God for giving me Christian parents who shared their legacy of faith with me, my brother Scott, my sister Christy and our entire extended family — not to mention the hundreds of girls for whom they cared at Christ’s Haven.

I’m reminded of Brad Paisley’s 2001 hit song “Two People Fell In Love.” I’m so incredibly blessed that my parents fell in love.

Happy 60th anniversary, Mom and Dad!

This column is adapted from one originally published at the Rosses’ 50th anniversary in 2014.

Inside The Godbeat

I watched Thursday night’s debate between former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden, intending to write about the religion angles.

But except for one mention of “religious leaders” by Trump in discussing abortion, such angles proved amazingly scarce.

That’s not to suggest that the debate was inconsequential.

It was amazingly consequential, as the post-debate discussion on the left (see the New York Times’ Thomas L. Friedman) and the right (see the Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan) attests.

The Final Plug

My Christian Chronicle colleague Erik Tryggestad won a top Religion News Association award last year for his coverage of the war in Ukraine.

Erik just returned home from another reporting trip to that besieged Eastern European nation and wrote a powerful column on “Why Ukraine still matters.” Check it out.

Happy Friday, everyone! Enjoy the weekend.

Bobby Ross Jr. writes the Weekend Plug-in column for Religion Unplugged and serves as editor-in-chief of The Christian Chronicle. A former religion writer for The Associated Press and The Oklahoman, Ross has reported from all 50 states and 18 nations. He has covered religion since 1999.