Despite facing abject poverty, alcoholism, grief, domestic abuse and gun-wielding foes, Childress didn’t cave to culture pressers. He certainly didn’t soften his theology. But he did soften hearts and minds to Jesus. The challenges we face look different, but sin is ever-constant. 

If you ever visit Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains, then you’re sure to hear wild stories of rough mountain people and their gritty Appalachian history. Old-timers will tell you tales of crafty bootleggers, notorious family feuds, and shadowy superstitions. But if you’re lucky, someone might tell you the astounding story of a simple Presbyterian preacher who moved a mountain closer to Jesus.

I married one of those rough mountain people from the Blue Ridge. My husband Eric is related, although “distant kin,” as he says, to Robert “Bob” Childress, a well-known mountain minister who during the early 20^th century built six churches and served at least eight congregations across the nearly impassable peaks of the Blue Ridge. Curious, I sought out to learn more.

The Man Who Moved A Mountain was written by Richard C. Davis in 1970. It is the only published biography on Childress I could find, but if offers first-hand accounts into a little-known, yet the extraordinary ministry of a simple mountain man.

A Mountainous Mission Field

Smack dab in the middle of the Great Depression, Childress brought the Gospel to the deepest coves and hollows of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It wasn’t easy. During this dark period of Appalachian history, there were multitudes of challenges facing the young preacher and his growing family.

No warm greeting was offered when Childress moved his family onto Buffalo Mountain in Floyd County, Virginia whose summit resembles a charging buffalo.

Here was a man of God who came to the mountains to preach against bitterness and hate, vices and violence, and spread the transformative truth and love of Christ. Meanwhile, his new neighbors were liquor distillers, bootleggers, drunks, and rifle-toting murderers mighty skeptical of outsiders.

Hardly any of the locals, then called mountaineers, ever stepped foot off their plots of land, much less traveled off the ridge. National news couldn’t quite make it that far up the mountains. There were neither paved roads nor bridges. Families were considered fortunate if their pantries contained a pail of apples and a little corn meal. Education was not much of an option and Christianity was given its limits.

During this dark period, the Blue Ridge was Primitive Baptist country. They are said to have ruled religion in the ridge with their liquor and guns. In his Childress biography, Davis wrote of the denomination, “It had roots in the Scriptures but thrived on superstition and fear and was kept alive only by man’s ageless hunger for worship.”

Primitive Baptist preachers were nicknamed the Hardshells, for they were staunchly intolerant of most everything from seminary educations to Sunday schools, late night services to new church buildings. Imagine the scandal when suddenly Childress encouraged the local children to attend his Sunday school and day school and began “sprinkling” babies at baptism.

A Rough Start

God knew exactly what He was doing by calling Childress to this mountain mission field. No city slicker would’ve survived. The people of the Blue Ridge needed a minister who spoke their language, and even then they weren’t excited about him.

Childress was a stubborn, hot-tempered mountain man who grew up at the bottom of “the mountain” in what was called The Hollow, Virginia. He was born in 1890 and his family was said to be “the poorest in a place where everyone was poor.”

“Our home, at best, couldn’t be called a happy one,” Childress wrote of his early life. “When I was not quite three, I got drunk. That’s the first thing I remember in my whole life… Brandy was god in our cabin. It was brandy that made life bearable.”

He was first introduced to Scripture at six years old. A Quaker college in North Carolina sent a young teacher to The Hollow to start a school and lead Sunday school. The schoolhouse was five miles away from Childress’ home, but his older brother insisted on all five children making the two-hour walk on Sundays.

As a teenager, Childress was a rowdy rebel. There wasn’t much to do in The Hollow for a teenage boy looking for excitement except to drink liquor, gamble and pick fights. That’s exactly what Childress did. By age 20, Childress was in total despair. “I was miserable and sick to my soul,” wrote Childress. “[T]wice I went out into the woods and put my pistol to my temple. But each time I put it down. I can’t tell you why.”

A local Methodist church held a revival a short time later. Childress was walking by and heard singing. He went in. When the minister gave an alter call, Childress surrendered his life to Jesus Christ. He wrote, “For the first time in my life I felt a power stronger than liquor and rocks and guns.”

Childress’ heart was heavy for his rowdy friends and family. He hated the corruption and despair he saw all around. So for two years he served as a deputy sheriff arresting Moonshiners and busting up distilleries. But after watching his fellow law officers steal the liquor they were supposed to confiscate, he knew the law couldn’t change Appalachia. But he knew Christ could.

He felt the Lord calling him to seminary.

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