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.
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