I was recently introduced to Buff Scott, Jr., a 96-year-old gentleman who is still on fire for our Lord. I had a chance to interview him and the audio is below. Buff still writes his Reformation Rumblings newsletters, which he has been doing for 39 years. He converted from IC to relational fellowships about 50 years ago. He is not only an Unsung Hero but he is a gem of a man. His testimony below was taken from a couple of sources. If you would like to get on his mailing list please contact me.
I was born and brought up in the Mountains of Eastern Kentucky. There were nine of us. Education wasn’t stressed in those Kentucky mountains. My formal education consisted of the 7th grade. My teacher refused to promote another student and me to the 8th grade when she caught us looking up dirty words in the dictionary. Yes, that actually happened.
Mom was a Hatfield before she married Dad. I was four years old and rocking my pet cat in the old rocking chair on the front porch of our shack when I watched a man shoot another man down, 20 feet in front of me. The impact of the bullet made him sick instantaneously and he fell to his knees and threw up. I screamed and ran into the house. As the bullet missed his heart, but barely, and lodged in his rib cage, he survived. But he never again “trespassed” the shooter’s wife.
Such was life in the Appalachian Mountains. Dad did some bootlegging when I was a kid, but surrendered his unprincipled lifestyle and embraced Jesus when I was about 11 years old. He threw his cigarettes and bottle of moonshine whiskey in the same creek he was immersed in and never touched them again.
It was later on in life that I educated myself, mostly through self efforts. A big part of my occupational experiences has been in the journalistic field as Writer, Editor, and Publisher. Additionally, many years have been spent in the psychiatric arena as alcohol and drug counselor, Vocational Rehabilitation Specialist, and teacher.
My career in the bowels of Churchianity began when I was but a youngster. I was indoctrinated at an early age. When I was 26, I was “called” to my first church as pulpit minister. That was a giant step for a hillbilly who was born and brought up in the Appalachian Mountains of Eastern Kentucky, one mile from where the Hatfield-McCoy feud began.
Having been a child of partisan religion a big part of my life and served many of her churches as pulpit minister, pastor, orthodox leader and teacher, I want to tell you in this undertaking why I deserted Churchianity and became a free man in Jesus. Inasmuch as the clergy-“chief priests and elders”-have no control over my life, my thinking, and my teaching, I can tackle this endeavor without interference from the ecclesiastical “powers that be.” I assure you, I am no longer one of their puppets.
Let me say at the outset that I love and respect my spiritual brothers and sisters, in spite of their loyalty and addiction to Churchianity. They are my brothers and sisters and I have not rejected them. I have rejected the system that has them enslaved. I can identify with them, for I was once as they are. Like them, I too believed Jesus authored a church. I preached my brand of church on the sidewalks and from many pulpits. I pressed her upon others. I strove to win converts to her ranks. I was totally sold on the concept that Jesus redeemed her with His sacrifice. I felt that King James’ Romans 16:16 and other related scriptures were pure gold. I equated “church” with God’s new reign and defied any man to show otherwise. Like my churchly brothers and sisters, I used the same arguments, affirmed the same theology, advocated the same principles, and quoted the same scriptures.
It was 1976 when, after careful evaluation of and research into institutional religion, I concluded that Churchianity was not the solution to sin, or to the world’s problems. I discovered that institutional religion and the contemporary church were introduced by men who envisioned their answers to life’s problems more profound than God’s. The stream flowing from the river of life was pure and tranquil before religion and church contaminated it. It is my sentiment that God has been replaced with Religion, and Jesus has been substituted with Churchianity.
The spirit of man can survive only in an atmosphere of freedom, and it is difficult if not impossible to be free while being a bond servant to some sect or denomination. I love my freedom too much to allow some church or religious party to tell me what I can and cannot teach, what I can and cannot believe, and how I can or cannot conduct my daily affairs.
My allegiance is to a Man called Jesus, and it is to Him that I will give an account. It is in Him that I will stand or fall. And He is able to make me stand. I will never grow too old to acknowledge and listen to valid counsel from others, but I will never become so senile as to renounce my will in favor of religious slavery-no, never again.
Did I leave Jesus when I abandoned organized [partisan] religion or the religious establishment? Goodness, no! He and I are closer now than ever before. As a result of my surrendering institutional religion in favor of freedom in Jesus, I am now a “believer at large,” a free thinker, and one of God’s instruments for reform.
No human being and no partisan group or church does my thinking for me any longer. I arrive at conclusions after careful evaluation, study, and prayer. Simply stated, I have cast aside the chains of religious orthodoxy and deserted the Establishment’s status quo. God has blessed my ministry of reformation abundantly. Currently, I have hundreds of recipients, here and in foreign lands, who receive my weekly Reformation Rumblings.
Not every recipient agrees with my views on reformation-naturally. But rarely do I have a “theological knock-down-and drag-out-fight,” or an exchange of unsightly implications with any of them. But in spite of the few who disagree disrespectfully, I enjoy exchanging views with many of the admirable readers. So I’m not going anywhere unless I’m fired!
You can read a sample of Reformation Ramblings here. You can read an excerpt of Buff’s book Apostate Church here.