A Tribute to My Father-in-Law

Louis Andrew Tinsley was born 110 years ago this week, on May 11, 1910. There are few people who do not have some connection with the Missouri counties of Hickory or Polk who ever met or knew about him. But he was June’s father and I am happy to offer this tribute in his honor.

The Tinsley Family

According to the genealogical records June and I have found, the Tinsley family in the U.S. are descendants of Thomas Tinsley, who was born in Yorkshire, England, in 1618.

Thomas immigrated to Virginia with his new wife in 1638. Two years later, Thomas S. was born. The latter’s great-grandson was William Thomas Tinsley, and even though he was not born until 1763, he was drafted twice for service in the Revolutionary War.

Before the turn of the century, William moved to Kentucky, and his grandson Jeptha was born there in 1831. Around 1870 Jeptha and his family moved to Missouri where he lived until his death in 1912, two years after his great-grandson Louis was born in Hickory County.

The Hardships of Louis Tinsley

June’s father Louis had a challenging life in many ways. His mother died when he was only ten, and his father seems to have been a stern man who expected too much out of his older son (Louis). Then during his boyhood years, Louis was struck with polio, which left him with a twisted foot and a limp.

Probably encouraged by his father to do so, Louis dropped out of high school after a couple of years, and then when he was in his early 20s the Great Depression began. In 1933 he joined the newly established Civilian Conservation Corps for a regular six-month term.

Just before Christmas that year, Louis married June’s mother, and they began to eke out a living on a rented farm in Polk County. But 1934 was one of the worst of the Dust Bowl years, so it was a tough time for farmers in southwest Missouri.

By the time I met Louis in the fall of 1955, his health was already declining, and by early 1957 he was diagnosed with cancer. He was able, though, to escort June down the aisle at our wedding in May 1957, but then he died less than six months later.

I am still sad that he was never able to know any of his grandchildren, nor they him. 

June and her father (5/26/1957)

In Tribute to Louis Tinsley

Despite the hardships, my father-in-law did remarkably well. By 1944 he and June’s mother were able to purchase their own farm for their family of five.

Louis had a knack for working on farm machinery and cars, often helping neighbors out with theirs. He also studied “how-to” books and bought the necessary supplies to wire their farmhouse for electricity and later to install indoor plumbing.

Louis had an inquisitive mind, and would often stay up nights reading the books that June’s mother, a schoolteacher, and the three children would bring home from school. He also read through the World Book Encyclopedia.

More importantly, from what I learned and observed about him, Louis Tinsley was a man of basic honesty and integrity. Because of his sense of honesty and integrity, he habitually disapproved of pretentiousness and hypocrisy.

Louis became a Christian in his early 20s and was a member of Rondo Baptist Church in Polk County from 1934 until his death. Although he was not always an active churchman, he did help construct the new church building where June and I became the second couple to be married in it.

As a teenager, June did not always appreciate her father, but perhaps to a significant degree she has him to thank for her own unpretentiousness and honesty, attributes I like about her—and appreciated in my father-in-law.

Infringement on Religious Freedom: Then and Now

A year ago, my blog posting was about Roger Williams, who arrived in Boston Harbor on Feb. 5, 1631. As you know, Williams became the great champion of religious liberty in the Colonies and influential in freedom of religion eventually being included in the U.S. Constitution.

But 113 years after Williams’s arrival in the “new world,” there still wasn’t religious freedom in the Colonies, at least not in Virginia. On Feb. 4, 1774, 240 years ago today, David Tinsley was arrested and charged with “having assembled and preached to the people at sundry times and places” as a Baptist preacher.

Tinsley ended up serving four and a half months in the Chesterfield County jail. During that time, though, he “preached to the assembled crowds through the grates of the prison” (This Day in Baptist History).

Just last year I learned the particulars about the preachers jailed in the 1770s because they were publicly preaching as Baptists. And I was especially interested in Tinsley, who was one of several so jailed.

My wife, June, was a Tinsley. So we began to do some research and found that David’s grandfather was Thomas S. Tinsley, the first Tinsley to be born in the U.S. (He was born in 1640, two years after his parents had come to Virginia from England.)

And Thomas S. Tinsley is June’s 7^th great grandfather, so David was her first cousin, seven times removed.

Not being able to assemble a crowd and preach to them seems, certainly, to be an infringement on religious liberty. Accordingly, some of the most outspoken advocates of guaranteeing religious liberty were Baptists in Virginia, such as John Leland, a Baptist preacher who worked with (or worked on) James Madison in getting the Bill of Rights added to the U.S. Constitution.

But now, in 2013-14, there are Baptists claiming that they, and other Christians, are suffering from an infringement of their “freedom of religion.”

Just last week the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) told the U.S. Supreme Court, as part of a friend-of-the-court brief, that the Obama administration’s abortion/contraception mandate (their words) violates a federal law protecting the religious freedom of for-profit corporations and their owners.

Russell Moore, president of the ERLC, in a Jan. 28 podcast said, “Our Baptist forefather John Leland wasn’t content to trust politicians with tyranny over the conscience. We are his sons and daughters, and we will carry the banner of soul freedom to the Supreme Court and beyond.”

What a difference! Leland was struggling for the freedom of Baptists in Virginia to preach without being arrested and jailed. But now Baptists like Moore are struggling for the right of employers not to provide insurance to their employees who might use that insurance in ways that they (the employers) do not approve for religious reasons.

Rather than religious freedom for all, it sounds as if these employers (such as Hobby Lobby’s CEO, who is an evangelical Christian but seems not to be a Baptist) are seeking to have tyranny over the conscience of other people. Since they do not believe in the morning after pill, they do not want to provide insurance that will allow their employees to use such measures, even if they can do so in good conscience.

David Tinsley suffered in jail because of preaching the Gospel openly. Hobby Lobby’s CEO and other conservative Christians are now “suffering” because of being required to provide insurance for their employees.

Somehow the “infringement” of the latter’s religious freedom just doesn’t seem quite as great a problem to me.