AMISSVILLE, Va. — Most everyone in Amissville would tell you that Amy Hitt sometimes runs her mouth. As Hitt herself puts it, "I’m a ‘Say what’s on my mind’ kind of person."
"She’s direct and she doesn’t have tact," said Jack Atkins — and he’s one of Hitt’s biggest defenders.
At Amissville Baptist Church a little while back, they had a vote on Amy Hitt’s mouth. By a tally of 25 to 22, the congregants decided to exclude Hitt from the church, banning her from services. She may no longer teach the missions class, run the nursery, supervise the toddler room or care for the flower beds out front. She is barred from "coming upon church property for any reason," according to a letter signed by the pastor and six church deacons.
Hitt is being punished for committing the sin of gossip. This, says the Rev. Edward Taylor, the pastor for the past two years, is one congregation that intends to enforce church discipline. After all, it is written in Leviticus, "Thou shalt not go up and down as a talebearer among thy people."
The matter in Amissville, Va., is the subject of some dispute. Hitt says no one ever told her exactly what she was supposed to have said that was so far beyond the pale. Pastor Taylor won’t talk about the specifics.
But others in the congregation, as well as letters to Hitt from the church, make it clear that the trouble peaked when Hitt raised questions about the pastor’s compensation and his interest in obtaining a better, bigger house.
"Pastor Taylor wanted the church to rent out the parsonage and give him the money so he could get a new place," said Atkins, a former chairman of deacons at the church.
"Amy started asking questions. You’re not going to stop people from talking. She was relaying information that needed to be relayed."
That’s the role Hitt says she has always played — in her family, in the church, around this town of 1,500 in the foothills of the Blue Ridge. For some years, Hitt wrote the Amissville column in the Rappahannock News, the weekly paper. She wrote about the Ruritan Club’s Community Christmas Baskets, about folks in town who were celebrating birthdays.
Hitt, 39, moved to Amissville 20 years ago and has belonged to the Baptist Church since 1998. From the start, she spoke her mind. At a church business meeting three years ago, she defended two women who were being threatened with removal from the Sunday school teaching staff because they were having marital problems.
"I blew up," Hitt said. "I lost my temper." She accused leaders of the church of not being very good Christian witnesses. The two women were replaced as teachers.
Last spring, two deacons came to Hitt and told her that because of her outbursts, she would no longer be permitted to teach in the vacation Bible school. When Hitt ran into the pastor at the post office a short time later, she asked why she was being punished.
"I mean, I had personally repainted a room in the church," she said. "Anything they needed, I pitched in. So I asked the preacher, ‘Why don’t you want me here?’ "
Hitt claims Taylor replied: "Women should be seen and not heard." Two other members of the church said they had heard the pastor make comments along those lines.
Things went downhill from there. Hitt stopped attending services, though her two boys still went to Sunday school. By last fall, when the dispute arose over a house for the pastor, Hitt said she made five phone calls to alert fellow members that the question might come up at the next church business meeting.
At that meeting, report three people who were present, the pastor noted that some members were in attendance because they’d heard he was going to seek permission to buy a new house at the congregation’s expense. Taylor told them he had no such plan. He proceeded to read a series of scriptural passages about gossip.
A few weeks later, this January, Hitt received a letter notifying her she would be separated from Amissville Baptist if she did not confess publicly and repent for "raising dissension in the church, gossiping, spreading falsehoods and actions that hurt the witness of the church."
"This is the first time I’ve had to take church discipline to this level," Taylor said. "Usually, you just go to the person and say, ‘What you’re doing is wrong.’ "
In Hitt’s case, "our desire is not and was not to kick someone out," the pastor said. "But gossip is one of the most divisive things done in a church. So we have to enforce discipline to bring them to the point of repentance. It’s done in love, not in anger. It’s like disciplining your children — you do it because you love them, and it hurts you to do it."
Hitt and her supporters say she spoke no falsehoods and meant no harm.
Taylor says about five of the church’s members have left in protest of Hitt’s ouster. "It has been an extremely difficult time," he said. "We love them, and we hope they will return."
But those who have left say they see no clear path back. "This gives the Baptist Church a bad eye," Atkins said. "It was wrong to single out one person and one sin. There’s plenty of people having affairs and all kinds of sins.
"I need to take a little vacation from that place."
Hitt admits that "I am not perfect, and I am not the best Christian. … But we weren’t put here to judge people. We’re here to help people."
On Sundays now, she stays home. So do her boys, who miss their friends at Sunday school.
The church, Taylor wrote in the bulletin not long ago, "is like a safe harbor at an island … a refuge in the midst of life’s stormy seas."
Amy Hitt says she is drifting. She’s looking for shelter, but she can’t promise she’ll be quiet. After all, she said, "I’ve got a big mouth."
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
