American Summer

Each day was a time clock that scarcely moved,
a slow fist punching us in, punching us out,
electric heat smoldering in the purple air,

but each night was a towering white fly ball
to center field—“a can of corn”—coming down
through stark glittering above the diamond.

Each day was a pair of heavy canvas gloves
hoisting garbage cans into an omnivorous mouth
that crept through thoroughfares and alleys,

but each night was the feeling of a bat
coming alive in your hands, it was lining
the first good pitch for a sharp single.

That summer I learned to steal second base
by getting the jump on right-handed pitchers
and then sliding head-first into the bag.

I learned to drive my father’s stick shift
And to park with my girlfriend at the beach,
Our headlights beaming and running low.

I was a sixteen-year-old in the suburbs
and each day was another lesson in working,
a class in becoming invisible to others.

But each night was a Walt Whitman of holidays,
the clarity of a whistle at five p.m.,
the freedom of walking out into the open air.


Edward Hirsch


I love the poetry of Edward Hirsch, and "American Summer" is a good one for a hot, muggy day like today promises to be in southern New Jersey. How many teens have taken that class in "becoming invisible to others" first through their summer jobs? How many have experienced the release of summer nights as a "Walt Whitman of holidays," or as a "can of corn" heading straight at them, thrilling and just a little scary?

Youth Sunday free pass

I have given myself permission to skip church on Youth Sunday from now on whenever I don't know any of the youth in the church - or even if I do know some of them.

Ahhhhhhhhhhh . . . . . . . .

Sad spectacle of ugly glee

I don't have anything to add about Gov. Sanford's weird and sad story - but I am appalled at some of the heartless reactions to it. I'd like to note that both William Saletan and John Dickerson, at Slate.com are exceptions. (Saletan's thoughtful reflections on morality are always worth reading - anyone interested at all in the abortion debate should look him up.)

A revolver, a box of bullets, and a gun cleaning kit. Everything except the holster.

Overheard on the bus today, in answer to the question: What are you getting your grandson for graduation?

A little explanation: the grandson is graduating from Police Academy, and will be a Philadelphia police officer. The city requires officers to carry an off-duty weapon, but does not provide them.

He knows us by name, part 2

Ascension Lutheran Church is only eight minutes from my home. It’s a small neighborhood church, on a corner in one of those New Jersey neighborhoods that look like Hollywood’s version of the ideal American small town. Although I find the building easily enough, I cannot find the entrance to the parking lot. I drive around the block again, and this time find a parking spot on the street. I walk through the parking lot, looking for the front of the church. Someone else arrives about the same time, and I ask her if the front doors are around the corner. She says yes, but everyone enters through the back door that faces the parking lot.

By this time I’m a little bit late. I wait outside the sanctuary while the Prayer of Confession and Forgiveness is being said, and then enter with a couple other latecomers. I find a pew all to myself, right next to the small organ, and look around while we sing the first hymn.The church seats about 100, and there are about fifty people present. In addition to the pastor, there are three servers: a man, a woman, and a boy, all wearing white robes. Rev. Jack Slotterback wears a white robe with a green stole.

The ceilings are not especially high, as befits a smaller church, but there are plenty of stained glass windows, mostly in shades of blue. The service moves along briskly. The first lesson is from I Kings, the story about Elijah healing the widow’s son. It is read by a woman who simply stands up in the middle of the aisle, and then takes her seat again in the pews. I have a little trouble following along with the prayers and readings in the hymnal and the bulletin insert, but I’m sure I would catch on to their system pretty quickly if I attended regularly.

Rev. Slotterback does not speak from the pulpit; instead, he too steps forward and stands in the center aisle. He speaks simply and effectively, using as his text Galatians 1:11-24, which he described as “Paul’s resume.” The main points are that God knows us by name, and knew us even before we were born. In addition, God has a plan for our lives, and we should try to find out what it is. A clue about how to discover God’s plan for our lives is in Paul’s account of what he did after becoming a Christian: he “went away at once into Arabia.” Like Paul, we need to seek God in Arabia, which could be any place where we can get away and pray. We should strive to find an Arabia in our lives every day.

It’s a very clear and practical sermon, about 15 minutes long. In addition, I learn that Rev. Slotterback has two dogs, Bailey and Luther.

During Intercessory Prayers (in the bulletin, at the part that reads “Here other intercessions may be offered”) people in the pews just mention names of other people, quietly and all at once. I find this surprising, but rather effective.

Next is Communion. We walk to the front altar in groups and kneel, and because of where I am in the pews, I am in the first group. Just before we reach the altar, each person takes an empty plastic communion cup from a tray held by a server. At the altar, the consecrated wine is poured from a common cup into each individual cup. This seems a nice way of bridging the gap between a common cup and individual cups, and really much like what you would expect at a meal – the host pours everyone’s wine from one container, but everyone has his or her own cup.

However, when the pastor reaches me, he stops, looking troubled. He puts his hand on my shoulder. Perhaps this is a closed communion church after all, and I am going to be asked to step down! Instead, the pastor says, “I’m very sorry, but I’m blanking on your name.” I reply, “It’s Emilie, although there’s no reason you should know it.” He then pours the wine into my cup, saying, “Emilie, receive the blood of our Lord.”

I realize then that he is in the habit of speaking everyone’s name individually during Communion, which is a nice thing when it can be managed. Either that, or – was I not supposed to take communion at this church? I hope I haven’t caused Rev. Slotterback any kind of crisis of conscience.

The next server hands me a communion wafer. However, because of the pause while the pastor asked my name, I hadn’t noticed what the people before me had done – did they drink the wine and eat the wafer at the altar, or take them back to their seats? I stand and see that someone is waiting with a basket for the empty cups, so I quickly drink the wine, drop the cup into the basket, and walk back to my seat. I bow my head and put the wafer into my mouth.

I’m feeling a little uneasy about taking communion here, being so unclear about the process that I wasn’t very worshipful at all, and possibly upsetting the pastor. Perhaps I should stop taking communion with other denominations. Before beginning this year of visiting I hadn’t realized that the “joyful feast of the Lord” would turn out to be one of the more difficult parts of Christendom to figure out.

All three hymns in this service are very traditional, and I notice and appreciate how often the old hymns mention death. It’s a good idea to think about death every so often, especially in church.I join the line of people exiting the church; there is no coffee hour. When I reach the pastor, he remembers my name, and hands me a visitors’ packet, which is on the shelf behind him. The whole experience of him asking my name at the Communion rail and then saying my name again as I left fit in very well with his sermon point about God knowing us all by name.

The visitor’s packet contains brochures, a copy of the quarterly newsletter, a magnet with church information, and a bookmark. Rev. Slotterback’s calling card is fitted into a slot inside the packet, and it is emblazoned with the words, “I’d love to hear from you!” From the newsletter I learn that the church has a mission statement: “Ascension Lutheran Church – empowered by Jesus to love, pray, praise, grow, and serve those in need.” I bet that slogan was written by a committee.

After the service I checked the church’s website (should have checked it before the visit, but sometimes you just don’t do things in the proper order.) Ascension Lutheran was founded in 1916. One of their early church groups, founded in 1920, was the Harmony Social Sunshine Club, which is as cool a retro name for a contemporary church fellowship group as any I’ve ever heard. Who wouldn’t want to be part of the Harmony Social Sunshine Club?

Ascension Lutheran has entered into a partnership with five other local ELCA churches, and they share services and events on occasion. That seems like a sensible thing for a group of small churches to do; it would be a big help for youth group leaders, to name just one obvious benefit.

The church seems to have an emphasis on prayer, and there is a place on their website where you can enter information about a prayer need, which will be passed along to the prayer team, the prayer chain, or the prayer partners. In addition, they make prayer turbans for women who have lost their hair due to chemotherapy, and prayer chaplets to send to military personnel in Iraq.

He knows us by name, part 1

Ascension Lutheran Church
Haddon Heights, NJ
June 10, 2007

On this Sunday I needed to attend an early service. I checked the church’s website: Ascension Lutheran would have an 8:30 and an 11:00 service on June 10, and then switch to the summer service schedule of one service at 10:00 until fall. The church also has a contemporary service on Thursday nights, but that would also be on hiatus over the summer. I realized that I had better check church schedules carefully after this week, as many would have modified summer schedules.

I was baptized Lutheran, so you’d think I would know something about this branch of Christianity, but we rarely attended church when I was a child, mostly due to some unfortunate timing on the part of some Lutheran visitors. My father died in a car accident when I was seven, leaving my mother to bring up two children (my brother is two years younger than I am) on her own. Her problems were compounded by the fact that my father had no life insurance, and her “career” at the time was taking in laundry and washing it in our basement, then delivering it via our old pickup truck. One evening a couple weeks after my father’s death, there was a knock on the door -- two visitors from our Lutheran church. My mother assumed that they had come to offer sympathy, and possibly even some assistance. It turned out that they were members of the stewardship committee, and were calling to see how much she would be able to pledge to the church’s annual fund.

Well, that was the end of our Lutheranism. I don’t blame my mother for being angry, but after many years I was able to sympathize a bit with the visitors, who I’m sure had not a clue about our situation. I also developed a healthy fear of ever being on a stewardship committee.

So what did I know about Lutherans before this visit? I had read a life of Martin Luther long ago. I knew that Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Johann Sebastian Bach were Lutherans. Luther’s great hymn, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, is one of my favorites. I knew that Lutherans sometimes get upset if you call them Reformed, which seems odd to most everyone else, because we think of Martin Luther as the father of the Reformation. In fact, sometimes they don’t want to be known as Protestants, which seems equally odd to people who consider Luther (Here I stand!) the archetypal protester. I knew that they have a view of Communion similar to the Roman Catholic view, but they call it consubstantiation rather than transubstantiation. Back to Wikipedia.

The Wiki article on Lutheranism cautions the reader about jumping to conclusions: “Lutheranism is a very broad faith family with liturgical and non-liturgical worship expressions, liberal and conservative politics, piety which ranges from austere to pentecostal, and both strict and permissive theologies. There is considerable debate about what constitutes "true Lutheranism" and much of this article must be read with this in mind.” It’s beginning to seem to me that this warning could be applied to almost any denomination, and to Christianity itself.
Also – Pentecostal Lutherans? That’s something I never imagined.

For the first time I notice one of these statements in Wikipedia: “The neutrality of this section is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page.” I linked to the talk page, where I found ongoing debates about various issues in the article. Those contentious Lutherans!

I learn that the largest group of American Lutherans, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), has established full communion with my denomination, so that means I’m okay to participate in communion when I visit. The more conservative Lutheran groups, though – I’d better not take communion with them.

I learn amazing things: Lutheranism is the majority religion in Namibia! Martin Luther is credited with the invention of the Christmas tree! Wait - can this be true? I check elsewhere on Wikipedia; the article on Christmas trees gives the primary credit to St. Boniface, who chopped down the Oak of Thor in a very non-inclusive, non-ecumenical act of evangelism, and found a little fir tree growing in its roots. The article also says that Christmas trees used to be hung upside down from ceiling beams, and that Martin Luther came up with the idea of turning them right side up and hanging lights and decorations on them. That sounds like a big improvement - those plain, upside-down trees must have looked rather like enormous air fresheners.

The ELCA website informed me that they have nearly five million baptized members and more than 10,000 congregations in the United States. The website for the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod gives a figure of 66 million Lutherans worldwide, with 4.8 million in the ELCA and 2.5 million in their own group. The next largest group is the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS) with 410,000 members, and then the Lutheran Church in the United States of America (no numbers provided – I couldn’t find a website for them or an article in Wikipedia, either – this group has somehow evaded the beam of the virtual spotlight).

Lutheran churches that identify with the Lutheran World Federation believe that no one church is singularly true, and declare fellowship with other Lutheran and non-Lutheran denominations. Other groups, though, maintain that orthodox confessional Lutheran churches are the only ones with completely correct doctrine.

I decided to read something by Martin Luther to prepare for my church visit, and followed one of the links. It led me to Luther’s Small Catechism, which is short enough to be read in one sitting. I would recommend it to any Christian. One small instance of the tone of the document: after giving instructions for evening prayer, Luther concludes with this command: “Then go to sleep promptly and cheerfully.” Excellent advice.

Wait a minute, preacher, part 2

First Baptist Church of Haddonfield, built in the 1800s, has a marvelous interior – high white ceilings with pale blue beams, pews arranged in a half-circle around the central pulpit and altar area, lovely stained glass. It is spacious, airy, and altogether welcoming. A large gold cross is affixed to the wall behind the pulpit, and the impressively large pipe organ sits off to the side, as do the choir stalls.

A woman welcomes me and shakes my hand as I enter, and two other people shake my hand when I enter the sanctuary. I estimate the church could seat about 400-500, and there seem to be about a hundred or so people (plus a choir of 17) here for the 11:00 service, which is the only Sunday morning service today.

The pastor is not here. (I realize suddenly that I’ve now been to six churches, but I’ve seen the senior pastor at only two of them.) I learn later that the senior pastor at Haddonfield Baptist is picking up a child from college, and his wife is touring the Galapagos Islands (there must be a Darwin joke here somewhere, but I can’t think of it).

The guest preacher today is Rev. Terrence S. Keeling, the Pastor of Evangelism and Social Concerns at Calvary Baptist Church in Paterson, and he is black (most of the churchgoers here are white). When the service officiants progress, I am surprised to see that the guest pastor is wearing a long white robe and a black stole with gold edging– I had for some reason assumed that Baptist preachers don’t wear robes. Before taking his seat on the dais he kneels in prayer for a minute or two.

The Minister of Christian Education, Erin (I recognize her from the website), is a young women sporting a fairly prominent tattoo above her ankle. (Maybe people at Oral Roberts and Liberty University are not as conservative as I had assumed.) She greets everyone with “Good morning,” and begins the announcements. She asks visitors to fill out the visitors’ card, which I do. Then everyone greets each other. I shake hands with several friendly people.

Some people are dressed extremely casually, and others, mostly people who seem to be above the age of seventy, are dressed rather formally -- suit and tie for the men, suits, nylons, and heels for the women. I notice again, as I often do in churches, how terrific older women with white hair look in those pretty pastel suits – pink, blue, yellow. They are gorgeous! I might mention here that very few people have been “dressed up” in any of the churches I’ve visited so far. Casual dress seems to be the custom in most churches these days, and I don’t mean business casual. I mean you would find folks wearing blue jeans and tee shirts in most churches these days.

The children’s choir (three girls and two boys) does a song, accompanied by adults on piano and guitar. They have the soft, feathery voices of most children’s choirs. The choir does a nice job, accompanying the congregation with a descant on the last verse of the first hymn, “Holy, Holy, Holy.”

The sermon text is Genesis 3, the story of the fall from Eden, and the title of the sermon is “Finding Your Way Back to Eden.” Rev. Keeling opens by explaining to everyone that he comes from a church with a call-and-response tradition: if he makes a point you think is really good, call out “Amen!” (We practice.)

If he makes a point you think someone else in the congregation needs to sit up and pay attention to (his exact words are, “If I’m getting into someone else’s kitchen”), call out “Welllllll . . . . ." (We practice.)

If he makes a point that makes you uncomfortable, that seems to be stepping on your own toes rather than your neighbors’, call out a warning: “Wait a minute, preacher.” He encourages us to practice this one, but gets a pretty lukewarm response. Not surprising - it’s pretty hard to get white congregations to shout out anything in church, especially anything longer than one word.

The sermon is about the two mistakes Adam makes: he is self-indulgent and self-reliant. We can return to Eden by reversing these mistakes -- curbing our self-indulgence and relying upon Jesus rather than upon ourselves. The sermon is about 30 minutes long, and builds to an impassioned exhortation to give your life to Jesus, and an altar call (although no one comes forward). Rev. Keeling is a very good preacher, and the sermon is excellent in structure, message, and delivery. The congregation tries rather gamely to go along with the call-and-response scheme, although we are plainly not comfortable with it.

Communion is celebrated. This church uses ordinary white bread, cut up into little cubes, and grape juice. Communion is served to us at our seats in the pews. I like this style of taking communion, passing the elements to your neighbors in the pews. One aspect of the theology behind it is that all believers are ministers to each other, and another aspect is that this way of taking the Lord’s supper emphasizes its origin in an actual meal, where people pass food and drink to their companions.

After the service I walk in the direction most everyone else seem to be heading, which turns out to be a large, handsome parlor. A woman introduces herself, and quickly ascertains that I am a first-time visitor. She attempts to find some visitors’ packets, but cannot locate them. She pours me a cup of juice and asks how long I’ve lived in the area. The cookies and other treats on the table look pretty good, but she steers me away from the calories before I can get my hands on anything. She asks the Minister of Christian Education, Erin, if she can find a visitors’ packet, and Erin goes off in search of the missing materials. At this point I notice that someone I know from work is here! Hey, Linda! We chat for a while. Erin returns to report that she can’t locate a visitors’ packet, and I assure everyone that this is fine with me, which is quite true.

When I try to retrace my steps back to the street, I discover that the front doors have been locked. I try another set of doors, and they are locked also. I ask someone how to get out of the building, and she points me to a rear exit, which leads to the parking lot behind the building. It seems church members park behind the church, and do not often use the front doors, especially after the service. This is the third time this has happened to me so far – having trouble either getting into or out of a church building.

A couple weeks after my visit, the woman I had spoken with called me to let me know that summer hours would be starting soon. Then, on July 3, she called again to ask if she could bring over some cake. Since I was at work, that was impossible, but certainly a friendly gesture.

A few weeks later I received the church newsletter in the mail. I continued to receive the newsletters every month, so I was able to follow news at First Baptist throughout the next year.
I was interested to see that on the front page of the newsletter for March of 2008 the pastor called for a day of repentance for the actions of the United States in Iraq. He stated, “We are mired in a failed strategy that opens the bloody scenario of sectarian warfare with no end in sight.” He ends the letter with, “I understand that Christians of good conscience will have many different opinions on this matter. In all cases I ask that we may pray for a just peace in Iraq.”

Reading this, I wonder again if I will hear much about politics in the year that lies ahead. My understanding of the separation of church and state doctrine is that it’s all right for pastors and churches to take a stand on issues, but not to endorse particular candidates or political parties. However, it’s often pretty easy to deduce from a person’s stand on issues which candidate he or she supports -- so the line of separation here is not as bright or clear as some people might hope. For example, in taking his stand on the war in Iraq, the pastor at First Baptist is clearly being quite critical of President Bush, whether he mentions him by name or not. So some people would probably prefer that he not take a stand. And yet how can a pastor, called to proclaim positions on issues of morality and truth and justice, not take a stand on something as big as a war?

Wait a minute, preacher. I need to think on this.

Wait a minute, preacher, part 1

First Baptist Church of Haddonfield
Haddonfield, New Jersey
June 3, 2007

Baptists confuse me. There seem to be so many different types of them, and I’m not always sure which Baptist is which. I know that the one doctrine that all Baptists have in common is believer’s baptism – the idea that baptism is something that should occur after a person accepts Jesus Christ as his or her savior, not something that is done to or for an infant. Also, Baptists believe that baptism should be accomplished via immersion, not via sprinkling or ladling a relatively small amount of water onto someone’s head.

Neil and I were both baptized twice, as babies and then again as adults. The Walnut Street Baptist Church in Carbondale, Illinois had a very kind and longsuffering pastor in the early seventies, who allowed a group of enthusiastic young Jesus people to set up a coffeehouse in the church basement and use its baptistery to immerse converts.

My most vivid memory of my second baptism, unfortunately, is my realization, upon seeing one of the sisters come up out of the water, that we should have put more thought into what to wear. I had a blinding flash of insight, not into spiritual things, but rather into the rationale behind wet tee-shirt contests.

Well, you live and learn. What else do I know about Baptists? I know that Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island, was a Baptist, and that Baptists have congregational-style, rather than hierarchical, church government. But beyond that I’m hazy. I needed to do some studying.
Back to Wikipedia, where I learned that Baptists are the largest group of Protestants, with a world population of about 90 million (47 million in the United States). (Since Baptists count only baptized members in their totals, the numbers would be higher if you included children, as lots of other churches do. The varying ways churches count up membership makes it a little difficult to compare numbers with precision. If you included children and other unbaptized attendees, Baptist churches might have something closer to 120 million members worldwide.)

Wikipedia also gets right to the point about why a person might have trouble distinguishing one Baptist from another: “Baptist churches do not have a central governing authority. Therefore, beliefs are not totally consistent from one Baptist church to another.” Of course, you can say that about lots of other churches, even the kind that seem to have fairly strict hierarchical governance, but it seems to be more true of Baptists.

Next, I discover something I’ve never heard of – Landmarkism. It seems a few Baptists have a doctrine known as “the perpetuity viewpoint,” the central idea of which is that Baptists (not all of them, just a certain type) represent the oldest church, predating Catholicism. According to Landmarkism, Baptist churches have existed since the days of Christ and the apostles (John the Baptist being the first Baptist, of course), and there has been direct succession from one legitimate Baptist church to the next since those days. There is a variant type of perpetuity doctrine, which claims that Baptist churches have existed since the days of the early church, but have sprung up more or less independently of each other.

Interesting. A natural corollary of this doctrine (and in this they are like all church groups who think they have a hold on the only true and valid expression of the faith) is that all other churches are illegitimate. Landmarkers call other churches religious societies, which is similar to the way Roman Catholics call non-RC churches ecclesial bodies. Neither group will say that the other one is, technically, a real church. And some Landmark Baptist churches won’t allow members of other churches, even other Baptist churches, to take communion with them.

I couldn’t figure out how many Landmark Baptist churches are in the country, partly because they don’t have a centralized form of government that might keep track of membership numbers. There’s no such thing as a Landmark Baptist Church denomination, just Baptist churches that hold to Landmarkism.

Well, that was an interesting bypath in my attempt to learn more about Baptists. There are certainly other points of view, though. One is that Baptists arose among the sixteenth-century reformers. Some people think that Baptists are related to the sixteenth-century radicals known as Anabaptists. Some claim the Baptists arose among the seventeenth-century English Separatists, who broke from the Church of England.

I learned that some groups of Baptists are Arminian, and some are Calvinists. Baptists who side with Calvin on the free will question are sometimes known as Particular Baptists, and Particular Baptists are further subdivided into Strict Baptists and Reformed Baptists (and the two terms are not mutually exclusive).

Also, some Baptists do not want to be called Baptists. They prefer to be known as Christians who attend Baptist churches. (Lots of people in lots of denominations say something along the same lines, actually.) Some do not want to be known as Protestants because, as explained earlier, they believe that their church predates those Roman Catholic newcomers, and thus they never had anything to protest against. Some object to being known as a denomination, because they think that the word denomination implies that they belong to some sort of hierarchical system, whereas they believe in local church governance with only very loose ties to any kind of larger church body. Some do not want to be known as evangelical, because they think evangelicals are too liberal.

All denominations have a convoluted history, so I don’t mean to be picking on the Baptists here, but I think this brief overview does give an indication of why I sometimes feel confused by Baptists.

Looking at the Wikipedia list of famous Baptists, there’s quite an interesting group, including Billy Graham; Moishe Rosen (the founder of Jews for Jesus); Harry Truman, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Newt Gingrich; John D. Rockefeller and JC Penney; Johnny Cash, Aretha Franklin, and Buddy Holly; John Bunyan (Pilgrim’s Progress), Rick Warren (The Purpose-Driven Church) and Tim LaHaye (the Left Behind books); and Frank and Jesse James (their father was a Baptist minister; this seems to be one of the more extreme examples of preachers’ kids going bad).

I see one of my personal favorites, Adoniram Judson. He’s not as famous as some of the others, but I have fond memories of reading a biography of him, To the Golden Shore. He was the first Protestant missionary to Burma from North America, and he labored and suffered (and I do mean suffered) there for more than 40 years, in the early to mid-1800s. I’ve been an Adoniram Judson fan for years.

Well, now I need to find out which kind of Baptists the folks at First Baptist of Haddonfield are.
I study their website, and learn that they are affiliated with the American Baptist Churches of New Jersey. The senior pastor has a master’s degree in literature and a doctorate in Communication, in addition to his Master of Divinity, and has been a Peace Corps volunteer. So when I read that I’m thinking the church might be one of the more liberal Baptist churches.

But then I read about the Minister of Christian Education and Youth. She’s a recent graduate of Oral Roberts University, and is enrolled in a Master of Divinity program at Liberty University (affiliated with Jerry Falwell’s church) – whoa, that says fundamentalist to me, but in a confusing way, because many fundamentalists do not believe in the ordination of women.
Well, I’ll just show up and worship with them.

Happy birthday, church! part 2

There is no follow-up, of course, because I didn’t fill out a visitor’s card. I did go to the church’s website, where I learned that St. Bartholomew’s was built in 1963. I see that they take part in a ministry that houses the homeless in their church building for a period of time every year (I’ve been involved in a similar ministry in our previous churches; it’s quite a big undertaking), and work on a food program with a church in Camden.


I learned later about another really fascinating ministry that this church works with. The Agape Mission Center is an Assenblies of God ministry that meets at St. Bart's on Sunday afternoons. That's not the interesting thing - plenty of churches share their space with other church groups. What's different about this one is that the pastors are a married couple, Rev. Charles Cho, DMD, and Rev. Grace Cho, MD. That's right - a dentist and a physician, married, pastoring a church together.

But even that, while unusual, wouldn't be enough by itself to get me so interested. The interesting thing is that this couple has set up a free medical clinic for the poor and uninsured, and the congregation at St. Bart's has offered space in their building for a dental office. St. Bart's parishioners also volunteer to provide transportation to and from the clinic for people who need rides.

Wow. Really - wow.

Happy birthday, church! part 1

St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church
May 27, 2007
Cherry Hill, New Jersey

I hadn’t intended to visit another Episcopalian church so soon after visiting St. Mary’s, but the rector at St. Bart’s, a friend, had invited Neil and me to attend the service for the Day of Pentecost. So this time I wouldn’t be attending a new church as a stranger walking through the door, but as an invited guest. It was a busy week, and I didn’t do one blessed thing to prepare for the visit.

St. Bart’s is a modern wood and brick structure, with small stained-glass clerestory windows, situated on a major highway. There is a nice garden behind the church, and when you approach the doors from the parking lot you walk along a tiny garden path, which provides a bit of almost-cloister walk. Two greeters shake hands with us as we enter.

I would estimate that the church seats about 400, and there are at least 200 people in attendance. This is easily the most racially integrated of the churches I have attended so far – they have almost an exact balance of black and white congregants. The raised altar area features a very large red and gold cross, as well as banners aplenty.

During the procession, two acolytes bear long poles with red and gold streamers on top, which they wave enthusiastically during the opening hymn. There is a happy birthday helium balloon near the front altar, which is explained by Father Peter’s opening words: “Good morning. Today is the day of Pentecost, which is the church’s birthday. Happy birthday!”

This is a very busy service! Several people, young and old, take turns with the readings. They are doing a special arrangement with the readings for Pentecost: sixteen people take turns at the microphone reading a Bible passage, each in a different language. As each reader steps away from the microphone he or she continues to read, so that by the end we are listening to sixteen languages being spoken at once, in imitation of the original day of Pentecost. Very nice.

Father Peter does a children’s sermon that involves a helium balloon. He then gives a homily on the topic of being filled with the Spirit. He’s a clear and energetic speaker. He doesn’t use the pulpit, but stands in front of the middle aisle.

There is a baptism, followed by something called The Cherry Hill Minute, which seems to be their term for what I’m used to calling passing the peace (people walk around, shake hands, and say “peace be with you”). Almost every church does something like this nowadays, and I’m really sick of it. Who decided that speed-greeting would create an atmosphere of fellowship? Well, I probably shouldn’t be so hard on this. Lots of people seem to love passing the peace.

After the offertory, the Eucharist is celebrated, using Eucharistic Prayer D, which is taken from the Eastern Rites, and incorporates chant. Although the bulletin clearly states that “all baptized believers in our Lord Jesus Christ are welcome to receive Holy Communion,” neither Neil nor I go forward for it. He no longer communes in non-Roman Catholic churches. I probably would have gone forward if he hadn’t been there, but it just seems easier and less awkward for us both to stay in the pew.

During communion someone plays a piano piece that is listed in the bulleting as “a tribute to the victims of Katrina in New Orleans.” This is Memorial Day weekend, so Memorial Day prayers are said during the post-Communion prayer, and someone plays taps on a trumpet. The service takes about an hour and a half, which is not surprising, since so much is going on.

At some point during the service I reflect that before I started visiting churches I had assumed that all Episcopalian churches were sort of formal and solemn, but that the two I’ve attended so far have been just the opposite – lively, informal, and very energetic.

Afterwards we file downstairs to the church basement for an international lunch, in keeping with the multinational theme of Pentecost. I believe this is the first time I’ve seen (or eaten) toad-in-the-hole. It turns out the most interesting thing about this dish is its name.

I’m being utterly lazy this Sunday. There was no visitor card to fill out that I noticed, so I didn’t do that. Neil and I sit and talk with Father Peter, but I don’t make any effort to introduce myself to anyone else, and they don’t really talk much to us, even the people who are sitting at the same table. I think they assume that we are Father Peter’s guests, and that there is no need to find out who we are.

Nobody in his or her right mind would want to be a member of a socially acceptable religion. It's very dangerous for the soul.

Read the interview with Phyllis Tickle in the Wittenburg Door.

Some excerpts:

"Christian nation" is such an offensive term that I can hardly speak it, even.

As Bishop Mark Dwyer has noted, about every 500 years, the Church feels compelled to have a giant rummage sale. During the last Reformation 500 years ago, Protestantism took over hegemony. But Roman Catholicism did not die. It just had to drop back and reconfigure. Each time a rummage sale has happened, whatever was in place simply gets cracked into smaller pieces, and then it picks itself up and reconfigures.

When I'm talking to Episcopal audiences, I like to say, "If we're in the business of trying to save the Episcopal Church in the United States, shame on us.

Hugh Hefner did a great deal for American culture when, in the mid-20th century, he opened up issues of sexuality and did all kinds of iconoclastic things.

[T]his is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean: to be just a little less arrogant.

There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the existence of God with that special intensity that comes after about the fourth beer.

And the atheist says: "Look, it's not like I don't have actual reasons for not believing in God. It's not like I haven't ever experimented with the whole God and prayer thing. Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldn't see a thing, and it was 50 below, and so I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out 'Oh, God, if there is a God, I'm lost in this blizzard, and I'm gonna die if you don't help me.'"

And now, in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled. "Well then you must believe now," he says, "After all, here you are, alive."

The atheist just rolls his eyes. "No, man, all that was was a couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp."

It's easy to run this story through kind of a standard liberal arts analysis: the exact same experience can mean two totally different things to two different people, given those people's two different belief templates and two different ways of constructing meaning from experience. Because we prize tolerance and diversity of belief, nowhere in our liberal arts analysis do we want to claim that one guy's interpretation is true and the other guy's is false or bad. Which is fine, except we also never end up talking about just where these individual templates and beliefs come from. Meaning, where they come from INSIDE the two guys.

As if a person's most basic orientation toward the world, and the meaning of his experience were somehow just hard-wired, like height or shoe-size; or automatically absorbed from the culture, like language. As if how we construct meaning were not actually a matter of personal, intentional choice.

Plus, there's the whole matter of arrogance. The nonreligious guy is so totally certain in his dismissal of the possibility that the passing Eskimos had anything to do with his prayer for help. True, there are plenty of religious people who seem arrogant and certain of their own interpretations, too. They're probably even more repulsive than atheists, at least to most of us. But religious dogmatists' problem is exactly the same as the story's unbeliever: blind certainty, a close-mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn't even know he's locked up.

From the late David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech at Kenyon College in 2005. Read the whole thing.

The next new mental disorder: bitterness

Imagine, if you will, the inevitable ads: "Think it's just bitterness from job loss, foreclosure on your home, or that nonexistent pension for which you've been saving all your working years? It may be 'post-traumatic embitterment disorder,' a mental illness that some doctors think is due to a chemical imbalance . . ."

From a blog on the Pyschology Today website.

I really like the word embitterment. It's rare that a word can convey a sensation so easily, but just saying that word out loud makes me feel a little grouchy (and saying the word bubbly several times in a row makes me feel better).

Tone deaf

Prominent secularization theorists like Peter L. Berger who, as recently as the 1960s, openly conceded religion's demise, are having to radically alter their forecasts. They have had to invent new concepts and categories to describe the phenomenon of religion's unexpected global resurgence. The philosopher Jurgen Habermas now felicitously refers to the advent of a "postsecular society" to characterize religiosity's remarkable staying power.

And Berger himself, who was once secularization theory's most vocal proponent, has expressed his change of heart in a book titled, The Desecularization of the World . . .The resurgence of political theology suggests that the promises of secular modernity have played themselves out and been found to be severely wanting.. . .The return of the sacred is in large measure a response to modernity's failings. However, religion's neo-Darwinian detractors seem unable to fathom the correlation. Moreover, they are peculiarly tone deaf, or "unmusical," when it comes to comprehending the very real attractions of belief and spirituality for a great many denizens of our hyperrationalized, disenchanted cosmos.

Excerpts from Richard Wolin’s summary of the state of recent scholarship on secularization, in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Concealing your identity

At the blog Withered Grass, I came across a discussion of a new book by Jonathan Malesic, Secret Faith for the Public Square: An Argument for the Concealment of Christian Identity (Brazos Press, Fall 2009).

An interesting contrast to much of what you hear from the religious right, and of special interest to me after posting the account of my visit to Bible Presbyterian Church, where the emphasis is on making sure one's faith is blazoned abroad in the public square.

One of Malesic's points is that Dietrich Bonhoeffer called for Christians "to intentionally conceal their Christian identity, silently transforming the secular by living in the world and practicing good works, but nourished by prayer and liturgy that exist primarily behind closed doors.” I don't know how much of that was in the context of living in a Nazi regime, of course.

You can de-baptize yourself!

Apparently the new thing among secularists and atheists is getting de-baptized. More than 100,000 former Christians have downloaded “certificates of de-baptism,” according to the London-based National Secular Society (NSS).

Their slogan: Liberate yourself from the Original Mumbo-Jumbo that liberated you from the Original Sin you never had!

(Photo courtesy Image After)

Next up in the church visiting series

Happy birthday, church
I visit St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church in Cherry Hill, NJ, where I hear the gospel proclaimed in sixteen different languages simultaneously (this is Pentecost Sunday), and eat toad-in-the-hole.

Wait a minute, preacher
I visit the First Baptist Church of Haddonfield in Haddonfield, NJ, where I witness a black visiting preacher try to get a white congregation to participate in the call-and-response tradition.

He knows us by name
I attend Ascension Lutheran Church in Haddon Heights, NJ, where I cannot find the entrance to the parking lot, and unintentionally bring the communion service to a temporary halt.

Five pounds of bread, Lord?
I start this Sunday by attending the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Cherry Hill, NJ, but because they do not post meeting times on their website, I arrive halfway through the service. After attending half a Mormon service I drive to the nearest church and discover Community Gospel Chapel of Voorhees, NJ, where a small group of very friendly Christians meet to worship in the style of the Plymouth Brethren. They send me home with five pounds of bread!

Be ye separate, part 1

Bible Presbyterian Church
May 20, 2007
Collingswood, New Jersey

Just looking at this church’s slogan in the yellow pages of the phone book (Theologically Reformed, Evangelistically Committed), I could see that it would be different from the first three I had visited. The slogans of the first three churches are designed to encourage folks to come in and check the place out. The slogan of Bible Presbyterian, however, will simply puzzle anyone who is not already conversant with church-speak, and will puzzle even some people who have been churchgoers all their lives.

On the Internet, I learned that that this group is an offshoot of an offshoot of my own denomination, the Presbyterian Church (USA). The details are complex, but basically what happened seems to be that, during the fundamentalist controversies of the 1920s and 1930s, a group of conservatives left the mainstream denomination of the Presbyterian Church. They called themselves the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC). Soon after that split, they discovered quite a bit of dissension among their ranks. One group was theologically very conservative, but not so concerned with cultural and political conservatism. The other group, led by Carl McIntire, was not only religiously conservative, but also culturally and politically conservative. McIntire’s group split from the OPC church in 1937, and became the Bible Presbyterian Church (BPC). The Bible Presbyterians were strong on temperance (they preached total abstinence). So Bible Presbyterians are the practically the original religious right, as well as heirs of the original generation of fundamentalists.

In the mid 1950s there was a split within the Bible Presbyterians, and the folks who left eventually became what is today the Presbyterian Church of America (PCA). According to the article in Wikipedia, the Presbyterian Church of America should not be confused with the Presbyterian Church in America, which was formed forty years later. Being Presbyterian, I probably should understand all this, but I was quite confused by this history. And I haven’t even mentioned all the various permutations of denominational names that groups used throughout the twentieth century as they split, merged, and re-formed for various reasons. Here are a few: United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (UPCUSA); Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUSA); Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod (RPCES); Reformed Presbyterian Church in North America, General Synod (RPCNAGS – yes, they had the word nags right in their name, which does seem a tad clueless in terms of marketing skills); and Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC).

In spite of all the hours and days that have been spent debating names and groups, most non-Presbyterians probably just associate all Presbyterians with one general group, the BCP (Boring Church People).

Reading all this, I repent of complaining about the names associated with Episcopalians. Presbyterians seem to have decided to make naming themselves a part-time job.
Among Presbyterians, distinctions among the various groups can loom large, so it can be disconcerting when they discover that most everyone else just lumps them all together. For example, Presbyterian Church in America folks generally dislike being confused with the mainline denomination, Presbyterian Church (USA). But the distinction is usually quite lost on outsiders.

Sometimes it’s not enough to tell someone you’re, say, Lutheran or Presbyterian – they want to know which kind of Lutheran or Presbyterian you are. And those people tend to care deeply whether or not you are the right kind. Then again, in other cases, you make the distinction quite pointedly “I’m Lutheran – Missouri Synod Lutheran,” and you can see that the person you are talking to has no idea what in the world you are getting at. You are trying to convey to someone that you are a stickler for the pure gospel, and for sound, classical theology, but all they hear is something about being German: “Lutheran, eh? Then you don’t mind if I have a beer? "

I learned one other amazing thing about Bible Presbyterian Church: Francis Schaeffer was the first minister to be ordained in this denomination! He is famous for establishing the Christian community L’Abri in Switzerland, and for writing many books that influenced both the Christian right and some of the Jesus people in the early seventies. One of the first books I read as a very new Christian was his How Should We Then Live? It affected me and many of my friends deeply.

I also discovered that the first General Synod of the Bible Presbyterians was held in the Collingswood church, which is where I’ll be visiting – it’s the very cathedral of this denomination.

The church is a big brick building with an attached school, on a major intersection. They have posted a large Ten Commandments sign on the corner of the school building attached to the church, facing the intersection. (Unfortunately, one of the words in the Commandments is misspelled: adultry. Everyone needs a good copyeditor.)

I decided to wear a skirt, heels, and nylons to this church. For the previous three visits I had felt comfortable in my black pantsuit (a friend had suggested I wear the same clothes to church for all 52 weeks, which was a tempting idea), but I thought that perhaps this might be a group that frowns on women in slacks.

Be ye separate, part 2

The church has only one Sunday morning service, at 11:00. When I park in the lot behind the building, I do not see very many cars; perhaps there is another parking area somewhere else. I start to walk around to the front, but a friendly lady arriving about the same time directs me to a door in the back of the building.

The lady who showed me the door disappears somewhere. I walk through a little hallway of Sunday school rooms, open a door, and find myself entering at the very front of the sanctuary! The service has not yet begun; I quickly find a seat. There is a stack of bulletins on the edge of the front pew, and I take one.

It’s rather disconcerting for a visitor to open a door and suddenly be standing in front of the entire sanctuary. We visitors like to slip in quietly, toward the back. On the other hand, almost no one is there to see me enter. The place is cavernously empty. I think it could easily hold 800 people, with another hundred or more in the balcony to the rear, and another fifty or sixty in the choir stalls behind and to the sides of the pulpit. There are about 30 or 40 people in the building.

I also notice that it is very clean and well-maintained, something that is equally apparent from the outside. I know how expensive and difficult it is to maintain a building this size – and, in addition to this enormous sanctuary and the offices and Sunday School rooms, there are sizeable school buildings. Could 30 or 40 people possibly keep an enterprise of this size going?

The next thing I notice is the admonition, printed in gigantic gilt letters on the wall behind the pulpit: “Be Ye Separate. (2 Cor 6:17)”

My goodness. This might be a rather daunting service. It occurs to me that perhaps the pastor at Haddonfield Methodist who had preached on inclusivity a couple weeks ago was trying to talk to these folks.

An elder or deacon (I assume) begins the service by wishing everyone a good morning. The announcements include exhortations to pray for a number of ill and shut-in members. The Doxology is next. To my surprise, my eyes fill with tears as soon as I sing the first two notes. It is just the typical short Doxology (Praise God from whom all blessings flow,/ Praise Him all creatures here below;/Praise Him above ye heav’nly hosts/Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”) Perhaps I find this so moving because this is the first time in many weeks that I am singing it to the tune to which I have been accustomed for years.

The first hymn is #336, “There Is A Fountain.” Again, I am moved. “There Is A Fountain” is one of those old-fashioned, unabashedly sentimental and also forthrightly gory hymns. It is set to a traditional American folk melody, and the combination always slays me. The tune is lovely and gentle, but the lyrics are graphic: “There is a fountain filled with blood/Drawn from Emmanuel’s veins,/And sinners plunged beneath that flood/Lose all their guilty stains.”

The choir sings. They are seven women and two men, and I am momentarily puzzled to see that the women are all wearing red yarmulkes. Then I realize that this must be a head-covering church, and I peer behind and to the side of me, as surreptitiously as possible. Sure enough, most of the women are wearing hats. So it seems my dressing up for church today was incomplete.

In fact, the woman sitting closest to the front is wearing an extremely bright yellow hat decorated with bold yellow flowers. I love this hat! If you have to wear a head covering in church as a sign of your submission to male authority, make it as bold and unmistakable as a traffic light!

The practice of women wearing head coverings in church comes from both ancient custom and from this passage in I Corinthians: “Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God. Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head. And every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head – it is just as though her head were shaved. If a woman does not cover her head, she should have her hair cut off; and if it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut or shaved off, she should cover her head. A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but the woman is the glory of man. For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. For this reason, and because of the angels, the woman ought to have a sign of authority on her head.”

Folks who interpret the Bible literally often take this passage to mean that women must wear a physical head covering, such as a hat or scarf, in church. Some also conclude that women should not cut their hair – after all, the Bible tells us quite clearly here that it’s a disgrace for a woman to cut her hair. Lots of fairly fundamentalist groups no longer take this passage literally, though – they interpret it to mean that women are in submission to men, but that their head coverings are spiritual rather than literal.

I suppose they claim that this is a passage that you can understand contextually, and in the context of today’s society nobody thinks that women’s hats indicate a subordinate position. If any passage is easy to take literally, though, this is one. It’s pretty clear that the author is talking about actual hair and actual head coverings. So if I were a member of a church that wants to understand and obey the Bible literally, it would seem like a no-brainer to enforce the head-covering and no-hair-cutting rules.

I wonder, though, what the author of those verses would say if he could see these modern church women, wearing bright yellow hats and tiny red beanies in church. Since the head coverings mentioned in I Corinthians were more along the lines of the veils (hajibs) that Moslem women wear today, would the first Christians even recognize these as head coverings? I can picture the author of the text looking around and declaring sorrowfully that these women might as well just shave their heads as wear these weird mini-hajibs that don’t even cover up their hair. I mean, if you want to interpret this thing literally, shouldn't you be a little more authentic about how you do it?

It turns out the preacher today, Rev. Christian Sturges Spencer, is candidating for the pastorate, so this means I get to see part of a job interview as well as a church service. He does the scripture reading, 2 Chronicles 20 (the whole chapter), in an old-fashioned preacherly style: tremendous emphasis, forceful gesturing, powerful voice, and impeccable enunciation. Since the chapter is an account of Jehoshaphat’s victory over the tribes of Ammon and Moab, it lends itself well to that dramatic type of interpretive reading (For the children of Ammon and Moab STOOD UP against the inhabitants of mount Seir, utterly to SLAY and DESTROY them: and when they had made an end of the inhabitants of Seir, every one helped to DESTROY another.) He has a superb voice.

Before the offering, we sing another hymn, with more of the old-fashioned gloomy lyrics (eg, “that I, a child of Hell, should in his image shine”). When the offering comes around, I make sure to drop in my visitor’s card. I look at my watch and see that it is already 11:50; the service has certainly been proceeding at a leisurely pace.

We settle in for the sermon, titled “God’s Weapons for National Defense.” I’m thinking that finally I’m going to hear some of that militant Christian right rhetoric we’re always being warned about.

The message is that God blesses Christian nations with godly leaders. This is why the United States has experienced good outcomes in all its wars up to the present. If the America will follow God, He will strike fear into the hearts of our enemies, just like He did for Jehoshaphat in 2 Chronicles. Israel was a military superpower in its day, at least until the nation made three fatal mistakes. The families of the leaders married into pagan families, the nation’s leaders made military pacts with pagan nations, and they negotiated commercial deals with pagan nations.

Rev. Sturges makes many points about where America is going wrong today. The one that strikes me the most is that the devil is using the music of Baal in churches – as evidence, he mentions strobe lights and “wild drums.”

Strobe lights in church? I hope one of the churches I visit over the next year uses them; I haven’t seen them in decades. I don’t care so much about the wild drums, but it would be awesome to find a church that uses strobe lights.

The sermon is about a half hour long. (Actually, I expected a longer sermon from such a traditional type of preacher, and as the year went on I was surprised by how short sermons are today. This turned out to be one of the longest. I've certainly sat through plenty of hour-long sermons in the past, back when preachers and church members took a more heroic view of the art of sermonizing.) Rev. Sturges covers three chapters of the Old Testament (chapter 20 he had already read in full, but he takes us back through chapters 18 and 19 for additional background), and he makes many points, but the main point is clear enough – America needs to return to the godly ways that brought us prosperity and strength.

But he never makes any practical applications about what we are supposed to do about this sorry state of affairs. Are we being instructed to elect Christian leaders? I don’t believe there are very many candidates whose theology would find approval among this group. And how are we supposed to stop our leaders from marrying pagans, anyway? And which pagan nations should we stop making treaties with, or trading with? (France, maybe?) I feel the same way I felt in the Methodist church - I need more context.

We are all invited back for that evening’s Bible study and hymn sing, at which Rev. Sturges will follow up the sermon with a study entitled “The Most Important Election in History.” This might sound political to an outsider, but hey, I’m Presbyterian, so I know that it will be about predestination.

The service lasts a little under an hour and half. A very friendly lady comes up immediately after the postlude and introduces herself. She is a wonderful ambassador for the church; her father had been a pastor in that denomination, and she was baptized in the Collingswood church by Carl McIntire himself.

She asks what church I belong to and I tell her. After a slight pause, she responds, “Oh dear.” (Not the last time a mention of the Presbyterian Church will result in an awkward pause during my year of church visiting, as it will turn out.) I can see that she doesn’t want to insult me, but that she knows that I’m a member of a dreadfully liberal and unfaithful denomination.

I ask about the school attached to the church, to change the subject, but she continues to look distressed. The school has been closed for financial reasons. This seems to be a church in rather dire straits, and I am wondering how they manage to stay in business. I had noticed in the church bulletin that the office is staffed by volunteers. Even more concerning, the bulletin announces that the budget for the fiscal year is $155,000. How in the world can they maintain that enormous plant and hire a pastor on that amount of money? The offering for the previous week had been $1,736.72 – if that is typical, and there is no other source of income, they won’t acquire even the $155,000 they have budgeted. Maybe they have a big endowment.

My friend then calls other people over to meet me. She tells them that I will be coming back that evening for the Bible study. I hadn’t said I would do this, but I don’t really mind – she is honestly very happy to see a visitor in church, and hopeful that I am a sign of good things. I feel ever so slightly guilty for misleading her in some way; I am not trying to act like a potential new member, yet she can’t help but see me in that light.

She introduces me to the visiting preacher. It turns out that the lady in the bright yellow hat is his wife. They are a very impressive family – they have thirteen children, and it seems that most of their children have either already become physicians, or are in medical school. (Under that bright yellow hat is the head of one very hardworking and determined woman, I am thinking.) I am comfortable with this aspect of Presbyterianism, which seems to characterize every flavor of the denomination – an emphasis on education.

One of their sons and one of their daughters are with them today – he is in his residency, and she is in her last year of medical school. The daughter wears a white scarf as her headcovering, and if I had seen her on the street I would have supposed she was Mennonite -- Mennonite women in Pennsylvania often wear white snoods or scarves at all times. I have a friend whose Mennonite grandmother wears her snood even to bed, because "I might wake up in the night and want to pray, and a woman can't talk to God with her head uncovered."

On the way out of church I pick up a brochure for the denomination’s seminary, Faith Theological Seminary in Maryland. It is as bold as the rest of the church’s statements, declaring on the front “Study the Word . . . Defend the FAITH!” Inside, the brochure lauds the seminary’s founder, Dr. Carl McIntire, and notes that his “stance on the doctrine of Biblical separation was uncompromising.” The back of the brochure informs me that the seminary is “separated from ecumenical apostasy and ecclesiastical compromise.”

I also pick up the church newsletter, which contains lots of information about friends who need prayer, notes that Dr. McIntire’s family had visited Collingswood recently, that the Semper Fidelis class has been on a Mystery Trip (lunch at a local restaurant and then a tour of a historic house), and that the Ladies Missionary Society will be holding a luncheon at the Tavistock Country Club. Reading the newsletter, I get a sense of how a shared history and shared experiences have drawn this little band of dedicated church separatists together.

The Tuesday after the service I received a nice letter from one of the church elders inviting me to visit again, and enclosing a brochure with more information about the church. From the brochure I learned that the property was originally an apple orchard on the edge of town, and that the original wooden tabernacle built in 1938 was replaced by the current brick building in 1957. That sounds about right – I think that fundamentalist churches were doing pretty well in the late fifties.

On the back of the brochure is a short summary of how to be saved, sort of a Four Spiritual Laws without the drawings. I visited the denominational website as well as the Collingswood church website later in the year to learn more about the group.

On the church website, I learned that Rev. Spencer got the job! I should pray for him; pastoring a small church that used to be big church is difficult. On the denominational website, I learned that there are only about forty BPC churches in the entire country. The group has recently reaffirmed its position on total abstinence, which is admirable in a way – they are sticking to their guns, I guess. On the other hand, abstinence seems utterly unbiblical, so it’s an odd way for a church that emphasize adherence to the Bible to take a stand.

Thinking about the church later, I realize that for some reason I’m not offended that they are so obviously animated by the idea that they possess the correct and pure interpretation of Christian doctrine, in contrast to everyone else. The fact is, every church pretty much feels the same way. Bible Presbyterians are a little more forthright about this belief, and more direct about telling everyone else just how utterly wrong and apostate and generally dumbheaded they are – but that’s a difference in style, not in basic stance. The Methodist minister who preached on inclusivity a couple weeks ago was claiming that her interpretation of the Lord’s table was the right one – and criticizing, without naming them, folks like the Bible Presbyterians.

That’s one of the hard parts about being a Christian. Joining any church can seem like an automatic taking of sides you don’t want to take.

The concept of holiness which I had formed and applied to myself was mistaken

“Practical experience has now convinced me of this: the concept of holiness which I had formed and applied to myself was mistaken. In every one of my actions, and in the little failings of which I was immediately aware, I used to call to mind the image of some saint whom I had set myself to imitate down to the smallest particular, as a painter makes an exact copy of a picture by Raphael. I used to say to myself: in this case St. Aloysius would have done so and so, or: he would not do this or that.

However, it turned out that I was never able to achieve that I thought I could do, and this worried me. The method was wrong. From the saints I must take the substance, not the accidents of their virtues. I am not St. Aloysius, nor must I seek holiness in his particular way, but according to the requirements of my own nature, my own character, and the different conditions of my life. I must not be the dry, bloodless reproduction of a model, however perfect…If St. Aloysius had been as I am, he would have become holy in a different way.”

Pope John XXIII, Journal of a Soul: The Autobiography of Pope John XXIII, January 16, 1903

Good words from a Pope – be yourself, in matters of holiness as well as in other things. I think it’s useful to ask yourself at times, “What would Aloysius do?” (if that’s a saint you are drawn to emulate), so long as you can remember that, in the final analysis, you aren’t Aloysius. This warning may be applicable to that other popular question, “What would Jesus do?” Good question to ask, so long as you can keep in mind the fact that you aren’t Jesus.

Nothing in the budget

I'd love to go with you, but there's nothing in the budget this month for skydiving.


Overheard on the bus

For the good of all, do not destroy the birds

Good Things to Eat is a little pamphlet published by the Cow Brand Baking Soda company in 1924 – it’s one of the items I picked up at a yard sale last weekend.

How easy it is to cook today, compared with eighty years ago! As the instructions in the booklet state, “It will not be long before thermometers will be generally used as kitchen appliances. Until then, we must show how we may know a food is cooked, instead of stating the exact number of minutes required.” The booklet mentions baking in coal, wood, gas, electric ,and oil stove ovens.

Cow Brand baking soda came with pictures of Useful Birds, and a person could send away for a complete set of thirty Useful Birds, just by sending six cents in stamps. I checked ebay to see if anyone might be selling a set of Useful Bird pictures – found someone selling four of the cards (purple martin, scarlet tanager, Northern yellow-throat, and red-breasted nuthatch) for only $2.00. Information about the baking soda and the bird is printed on the back of each card, with the motto “For the good of all, do not destroy the birds.”

It looks as though Cow merged with Arm & Hammer at some point, because some of the items for sale are Arm & Hammer Cow Brand things – as late as 1948 the company was using both names.

Hey, a couple people are selling the little booklet I picked up, trying to get $5-7 for it. Makes me feel better about my extravagant 25-cent purchase.

Next I’ll have to try some of the recipes. Maybe Spider Corn Cake or Eggless, Milkless, Butterless Cake. (Maybe in the fall – I hate to turn on the oven in warm weather.)

Worst. Pizza. Ever.

Can’t resist posting one more picture from the Lea & Perrins pamphlet.

Can you imagine being the guy who ends up with the slice covered in giant boiled onions?

Meat loaf train

One of the booklets I picked up last weekend was the Lea & Perrins pamphlet, Be Original in All Your Cooking. And I have to admit that creating a meat loaf train would be kind of original, as well as kind of insane.

If you haven’t seen James Lilek’s hilariously funny books about weird recipes, The Gallery of Regrettable Food and Gastroanomalies, I advise you to check them out. As one reviewer puts it, these books do for “the cookbooks of yesteryear what the robots from "Mystery Science Theater 3000" do for bad movies.”

Elephants and kangaroosies, roosies, part 2

I am surprised to see a large blue banner on the church lawn announcing Blessing of the Animals Sunday when I drive up. Another first for me! I have heard of this type of service, and have privately thought that it seems awfully unnecessary – but still, I wanted to see one.

Why unnecessary? Well, we can ask God to bless our pets any time we want, without the bother of bringing them to church. (Of course, that reasoning could apply to lots of other things we do in church.) Still, I thought it was unnecessary mostly because the pets I have had would have been disasters in church. The dogs and cats my family has been privileged to live with were thoroughgoing homebodies, and whenever we brought them to a new place we met with very limited success in keeping them quiet, happy, and continent.

As it turned out, Episcopalian cats and dogs seem to be unexpectedly spiritual; the 20-30 animals in St. Mary’s sanctuary did quite well in church. But I’m getting ahead of the story.

I walk in and see that this is a modern sanctuary, all wood and white walls, with stained glass windows. A banner in the front has a yellow background with red tulips, and proclaims, Experience Grace.This is the second service today; the 8:00 service was the Eucharistic service, and did not include animals. Also, I notice that the rector has prepared a different sermon for each service, which seems sensible, given the nature of the second service.There are approximately 100 people in the sanctuary, which seats about 250.

The piano prelude is “Morning Has Broken,” the hymn everyone my age associates with Cat Stevens. The bulletin is very full and helpful – it even includes a map on the inside cover, showing where the nursery and restrooms are located.The first hymn is “Rise, Shine, Give God the Glory.” The pianist is very energetic, and this children’s song is really fun to sing, featuring such lyrics as “Oh, Noah, he built him, he built him an arky, arky/Built it out of gopher barky barky,” and “The animals they came on, they came on by twosies, twosies/ Elephants and Kangaroosies, roosies/ Children of the Lord.” While we sing this, people process down the center aisle – several children serving as acolytes, and a few adults dressed in white and red clerical garb.

Perhaps the festive air and all the pets distract me; I have no idea what the first words spoken in the service were. I fill out a visitor’s card to put into the offering plate, though – finally, on my third visit in this project, I’ve managed to do this one little thing!

There are occasional barks from excited visitors during the first reading, which is from Genesis 1 -- the creation of animals and humans. These canine comments are greeted with good-natured laughs from the congregation. And at intervals a large, fluffy tail sweeps back and forth over my shoes. I can’t see the dog to which it is attached, but I am enjoying this variation in my ordinary church service experience.I keep waiting for the English rector to speak, until I realize that the man in front speaking with the entirely American accent is Father Jansma. What? Had I misread the website? I will need to go back and check it again.

We read the 23rd Psalm together, and then sing “All Things Bright and Beautiful,” a famous Anglican hymn. (This one probably reminds most people of James Herriot’s novels about a Yorkshire veterinarian.) The gospel reading is from Matthew, the sermon on the mount -- the section about not worrying about food or drink or clothing, because God takes care of the birds and the flowers.

In keeping with the rest of the service, the choir is very casual. There are six women and three men, who gather around the piano to sing. The pianist is excellent, and seems to be having lots of fun.The sermon is not listed in the bulletin as a sermon, but as a talk, entitled “How to Better Love Our Animals.” Father Jansma begins by noting how odd it is that in the United States we spend billions of dollars annually on pets, and yet at the same time there is terrible animal cruelty throughout the country. He then notes that understanding our relationship to animals will lead to a deeper relationship to Jesus Christ. There are two reasons animals lead us to God: they declare God’s glory just by existing, and they show us something about the gift of love. He notes that our charge to have stewardship over the animals means that we are responsible for seeing that all animals are treated properly and kindly. He explains that we are compared to sheep in the parable of the ninety-and-nine, and this leads up to a clear, forceful, Christ-centered message about salvation. I’m impressed.

During the prayers after the sermon, we are directed to pages in the back of the bulletin. I notice that about thirty women are listed as dealing with cancer. This is troubling. Why so many? Why only women? Are they all members of this church? What is going on here?

Next, people line up in the center aisle with their pets for the animal blessing. There are about twenty or so animals, all dogs and cats. The cats must be on drugs, as they are uncannily calm. As each set of owners and pets comes to the front, Father Jansma says a prayer for both, laying hands on the animal after first checking with the owner to see if that is wise. An assistant sprinkles holy water on the pets. Someone else takes photographs. I’m not sure, but I think a little girl brings a stuffed animal up to be blessed.

It all goes very smoothly. We say our closing prayers, and sing the closing hymn, “For All the Faithful Women.” I think the hymn was chosen because this is Mother’s Day. (Is that why all those women with cancer are listed in the bulletin? That list still worries me a bit.)

Mindful of my intention to shake hands and talk to people, I file down the center aisle after the service with everyone else, and shake hands with Father Jansma. Coffee and doughnuts are available on tables in a small area immediately behind the last row of pews. I sip my coffee and engage a few pet owners in brief conversations about their pets.

Monday evening, when I returned home from work, I found that someone had left a basket filled with all kinds of good things in front of our apartment door. There was a loaf of homemade banana bread, a chocolate bar with a special wrapper over the normal wrapper (a picture of the church and the words “Welcome to St. Mary’s! Please come as you are; we’ll grow with you”), a business card, confetti, and fourteen brochures about St. Mary’s Church, the Episcopal church, and being a Christian.

Wow. Good follow-up.

I went back to the church website and saw that I had, indeed, misinterpreted the information about Father Jansma. He did study in England, but he’s from New Jersey. How had I missed that?

A few months after that I went back to the church’s website again, and found that Father Jansma now had a profile page on the church website, as well as a blog. I learned that he was converted by reading a Chick tract, This Was Your Life. (Boy, that brings back memories. Neil and I were fascinated by Chick tracts when we became Christians during our early college days.)
Father Jansma’s favorite music is piano jazz; he has a personal goal of seeing every Shakespeare play live; he loves P.G. Wodehouse and Robert Frost. His blog makes me wish more pastors had blogs. His is a fairly bloggy blog, too – personal and quirky and not just a series of public relations pieces.

I learn that St. Mary’s is a Purpose-Driven Church – for the last year or so the church has been undergoing a transition, drawing up a new vision statement, and trying new things. It’s clear that the process has been somewhat painful; people have left the church and have been very critical of its new direction. Father Jansma quotes from George Barna’s book, Revolution, which is about the evolving shape of the American church: “We predict that by the year 2025, the market share of conventional churches will be cut in half.” That sounds pretty grim to lots of churchgoers, but Barna is optimistic: “People are creating a new form of church, and it’s really exciting.” I need to do more reading about the emergent church movement, about which I know next to nothing.

UPDATE: Much later, I check back and am astounded to find that Father Jansma is twittering, and is also posting video updates about his 6-week sabbatical on Youtube. The virtual revolution keeps on turning!

Elephants and kangaroosies, roosies, part 1

St. Mary’s Episcopal Church
Haddon Township, NJ
May 13, 2007

I was pleased to draw the name of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church for my next visit. I have worshipped in a number of Episcopalian churches, and I like their liturgy very much. I checked the St. Mary’s website for meeting times; they have an 8:00 Simple Holy Communion service, and a 10:00 am Holy Communion and music service; I decided to go to the second service. The priest, Father Henry Jansma, studied in England – hey, an English priest! This will be a real Anglican service.

From the website I learned that this church, too, has a slogan: “Come as you are and we’ll grow with you.” (Perhaps I’ve never noticed church slogans before because they are not particularly memorable.)

For my homework before the service, I consulted the Private Devotions of Lancelot Andrewes, Sometime Bishop of Winchester, translated from the Greek and Latin. Bishop Andrewes oversaw the translation of the King James Version of the Bible, which might just make him the person with the most impressive editorial credentials in the history of the English language.
Here’s a lovely example of Bishop Andrewes’ devotions:

Hosanna on the earth
Remember, O Lord,
to crown the year with Thy goodness;
for the eyes of all look towards Thee,
and Thou givest their food in due season.

Thou openest Thine hand,
and fillest all things living with
plenteousness,
And on us, O Lord, vouchsafe
the blessings of heaven and the
dew above,
blessings of fountains and the
deep beneath,
courses of sun, conjunctions of moons
summits of eastern mountains, of the
everlasting hills,
fullness of the earth and of produce
thereof,
good seasons, wholesome weather,
full crops, plenteous fruits,
health of body, peaceful times,
mild government, kind laws,
wise councils, equal judgments,
loyal obedience, vigorous justice,
fertility in resources, fruitfulness in begetting,
ease in bearing, happiness in offspring,
careful nurture, sound training,
that our sons may grow up as the young plants,
our daughters as the polished corners of the temple,
that our garners may be full and plenteous
with all manner of store,
that our sheep may bring forth thousands
and ten thousands in our streets:
that there be no decay,
no leading into captivity
and no complaining in our streets.

I like the way the word plenteousness gets its own line (although that may be an accident of typesetting), and the pairing of “kind laws” and “vigorous justice.” And how particular his enumeration of the blessings of children are, including not only “fruitfulness in begetting,” but also “ease in bearing” – something a woman would think of, but not all men. And how interesting that the sons are compared to plants and the daughters to corners of the temple. It would seem more usual to compare daughters to tender plants and sons to sturdy cornerstones. And how about that final request: “no complaining in our streets”? What a great prayer.

Episcopalians are confusing to me, in part because they have too many names. The entire church (worldwide) is the Anglican Communion. The Episcopal Church is the official name of the Anglican Communion in the United States, although I think other groups outside the US also call themselves Episcopalians. Plus the American group has a second official name, The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America (PECUSA). They also have an unofficial name, Episcopal Church in the United States of America (ECUSA), which is commonly used even though it’s unofficial. And their legal name, under which they incorporated in 1821, is the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. No one uses that one, except maybe some lawyers.

Lots of people think of Anglicans as Catholics without the pope -- they think of themselves as a “middle way” between Catholicism and Protestantism. (The comedian Robin Williams, himself an Episcopalian, has called the church “Catholicism Lite – same rituals, half the guilt.”) Everyone in churchy circles knows about the denomination’s much-publicized fighting over the ordination of gay priests, and about predictions as to its imminent fracture into two groups: a liberal (pro-gay, pro women priests) faction and a conservative (anti-gay, anti-women priests) faction. Wait – that’s way too simple. There are also plenty of Episcopalians who are fine with women priests, but not with condoning homosexuality. Hmm – what can I learn from Wikipedia?

Episcopalians have ordained women priests since 1976. They’re still arguing about it, too. That argument, which by itself has caused some congregations and dioceses to leave the larger communion, is dwarfed by the more famous controversy about ordaining gay priests. Lots of churchgoers who know nothing else about the Episcopal Church in America know that Gene Robinson is an openly gay priest who was ordained a bishop in the church in 2003.

Reading further back in the denomination’s history, I see that fully three quarters of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were Anglican laymen, including Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Patrick Henry, and Alexander Hamilton. Anglican clergy, however, tended to side with King George, in part because they had taken solemn oaths to serve the king as part of their ordination vows.

On July 4, 1776, Congress and several states signed laws making it an act of treason to pray for the king and the British Parliament, which was a real problem for some Anglicans. (And if making laws about who you are allowed to pray for doesn’t seem like a blatant violation of at least two articles of the Bill of Rights, what does? Of course, the Bill of Rights didn’t come along until a few years later, so I guess it was okay to make laws like that in 1776.)

Episcopalians nearly went out of business in the United States following independence – nearly 50,000 Episcopalians moved to Canada, where they could be loyal subjects of Great Britain. By 1790 there were only about 10,000 Episcopalians in the states, and they were mighty discouraged. Many churches closed. People predicted the church’s demise.

Well. here I had been assuming that Episcopalians had always been a substantial, wealthy, influential group in the United States – the quintessential WASPS. In reality, they had had a near-death experience following the Revolution. They did manage quite a comeback, though. Today the church has about two million baptized members. Numbers remained rather flat throughout the 1990s, with a small uptick in the early years of the twenty-first century – that’s actually not too bad, compared with how lots of other denominations are doing these days.

All are welcome at the Lord's table, part 3

Communion begins. The sermon has unsettled me a little. It has had what is undoubtedly the opposite effect of what was intended, for now I am worried that someone in this church might not want me to participate.

The ushers let about twenty people line up in the middle aisle, and then these twenty walk up to the altar and kneel. The bread is distributed first. This church uses pita bread. (Many churches use unleavened bread -- usually either matzo or pita -- because Communion is a re-enactment of the Last Supper, which was a Passover seder.) Then a second server brings a cup of something red (I think it was grape juice, but it may have been wine), and we dip our bits of bread into the cup and then partake.

This method of taking communion by dipping the bread into the cup is called intinction, and I’ve always thought that it is a nice way of handling the one cup, one loaf imagery while simultaneously not asking everyone to drink from the same cup.

After partaking, our little group of communicants files off to the left and then:

• walks through a doorway,
• walks down six or seven steps into a sort of hallway,
• crosses a little foyer to another set of steps,
• walks three or four steps up,
• walks through another door,
• comes out on the other side of the sanctuary,
• walks about halfway down the side aisle,
• slides sideways through one set of pews,
• walks across the middle aisle,

and we find our original seats again. In the meantime, the ushers have been organizing the next set of twenty or so people for Communion. I’m sure the people who attend regularly are used to this system, but it strikes me as mighty convoluted.

The choir does a lovely “Sevenfold Amen” for the benediction.

Because there is a long line of parishioners waiting to shake hands with the pastor in the middle aisle, I thought I would exit via a side aisle, find a bathroom, and then rejoin everyone for the coffee hour. Another mistake. I simply can not find the bathrooms. (They were probably clearly marked, but everything looks unfamiliar to me.)

I wander up and down halls, through the Sunday School area, back out to the cloisters and plant sale area, and finally back into the lobby where the refreshment tables had been set up earlier. They are no longer set up, because it turns out there is no coffee hour after this service. This makes sense, because most people probably just want to get home and have lunch by that time. However, now I realize that I have missed both the bathrooms and the social hour, and have failed to even shake hands with the pastor or talk to anyone. Oh no – I’m beginning to realize that I’m an incompetent church visitor! On the way home I resolve to do better next week, wherever I go. Surely I can learn from my mistakes.