“‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved,” the congregation sang. Scott Walker learned the words of faith here, language that he commands with ease today. “First off, I want to thank God,” Walker said in his November re-election speech. “I want to thank God for his abundant grace and mercy. Win or lose, it is more than sufficient for each and every one of us.”

Plainfield, Iowa — Before Scott Walker stood on a national stage, he crawled beneath the wooden pews and white steeple of First Baptist Church.

His father preached and his mother ran the Sunday school in this Iowa farm town too small to have a stoplight. Growing up in the parsonage next door — in the shadow of the church — Walker learned his first lessons in faith, politics and living a life on public display.

His religious upbringing set a course for the governor’s later life and may boost his presidential bid among evangelicals in this early caucus state. Just as he did in Des Moines a week ago, Walker will able to talk directly to “values voters” in Iowa, a state where caucusgoers have long leaned toward religious candidates such as Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee and Jimmy Carter.

Walker is already welcome in this northeast Iowa town, where four decades later some residents hold warm memories of a toddler splayed out on the church floor.

“It was cute to us,” remembered Janice Dietz, acknowledging that the young preacher in the pulpit, the Rev. Llew Walker, might not have appreciated the humor as much as his tiny congregation. “You could hear the snickers in the church.”

When Scott was 21/2, the Walkers arrived in Plainfield in the summer of 1970, moving from Colorado Springs, Colo., a city of more than 100,000 and a church where Llew served as an assistant pastor. In this community of 430 residents, Llew would head his own congregation and serve on the municipal council and his wife, Pat, would give birth to a second son, David.

A visitor can learn a lot about Walker’s seven years here by stopping at its central intersection, where the church still stands across from what in better times were a tavern, a pharmacy and a grocery store.

“You get the wrong number and you still talk for five minutes,” said JoAnn Ihde, a former neighbor to the Walkers who keeps a picture of the Wisconsin governor and first lady on her refrigerator. “You know everybody in town.”

A ‘shepherd’ in their midst

To understand Walker’s time in Plainfield, stroll down the main strip, starting at the church. It is one of just two in Plainfield — the other is Methodist.

With its stained glass and ornamented tin wainscoting, the First Baptist building evokes the days when its frontier faithful were baptized in the nearby Cedar River. Some of its families trace their histories back to the church’s founding in 1869.

Llew Walker had only some 90 people in weekly worship, but he made ambitious plans for his flock, enlarging the building with a renovation and installing the first indoor baptismal tank.

“Rev. Walker has in fact been a shepherd,” reads a history of the church written in 1976 toward the end of his tenure. “…We try to say ‘thank you’ but words are inadequate.”

Since then, the church building has changed little. With the hymn “Amazing Grace” rising from the organ on a recent Sunday, it was easy to imagine what the simple services would have been like in the Walkers’ time here.

“‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved,” the congregation sang.

Scott Walker learned the words of faith here, language that he commands with ease today.

“First off, I want to thank God,” Walker said in his November re-election speech. “I want to thank God for his abundant grace and mercy. Win or lose, it is more than sufficient for each and every one of us.”

Today, Scott Walker’s church, Meadowbrook in Wauwatosa, is large, evangelical and nondenominational.

The American Baptist faith of his youth is traditional but not sharply conservative, treating the Bible as the inspired word of God but also ordaining women and serving communion to other Christian visitors.

The son learned from his pastor father how to be at ease around people and keep them at ease around him. To parishioner Betty Balsley, Llew Walker and his family were as unpretentious and “common as an old shoe.”

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