We are puzzled and dismayed about this religious issue -- maybe someone can explain it.

My daughter-in-law visited her brother and his family and offered to take the little niece to Sunday School. They aren't religious but thought she would enjoy it (and she had a great time, fortunately, not knowing of the fireworks in the sanctuary).

This was a Baptist church. During the sermon, my DIL started waving her arm in praise. My own history is Methodist and we never did that but daughter and DIL have long gone to the sort of churches that meet in movie theaters or store fronts and they do. It's not wild behavior: just a sort of ritualized limp waving, as I've seen it.

The minister stopped abruptly and said right in the congregation for her to stop doing that: they don't wave arms in this church! She stopped and said she was sorry, but then got mad and rethought it and said no one could tell her how she could or couldn't praise Jesus, and left the sanctuary.

Well, darn. We always thought Baptists were............looser, more enthusiastic maybe, than that. This sounds downright Episcopal, rigid. No one was rolling around or shrieking in tongues, after all --- both of which I've seen or heard of, in days of yore.

What do you all think of this? She posted the story on Facebook, and her friends said she ought to come to their churches.