High hopes
By PAT WICK
Contributing writer
When Dad died, our mother wanted the memorial service held in a church since our father had spent his life as a minister. We were in a bit of a dilemma because the closest Seventh-day Adventist church was 20-some miles away in Enterprise and we needed something closer to home. We turned to Dad's sister, Naomi and she called her church elders at the Rosebank Brethren in Christ Church and they graciously offered their facility for Dad's memorial service.
I thought to myself, how ironic! I remember when I was a child, knowing my aunt went to a different church than I did, and how I feared she was very much "lost." It wasn't until I became an adult, started coming back to Ramona on a regular basis and actually went to church with my aunt that I realized how similar the faith of the Adventist church and the Brethren churches actually was — the message, the evangelistic desire, the church facility, the ardor of the preacher, the sincerity of the people, and the God they were worshipping. Same, same.
When I hear stories about the "olden days" I see the lines of churchdom drawn very tight and high. When a suitor came calling for one of my grandfather's daughters and he wasn't a Lutheran, Grandpa sent him packing. (There were other reasons why Grandpa showed boys the road, but the religious obstacle was a big one.) To my grandpa's credit, he outgrew this conviction and was stoically tolerant toward his younger daughter Martha when she brought home a young man who was a Seventh-day Adventist, of all things, and declared her desire to be baptized into this unusual church. Grandpa said, "As you feather your nest, Martha, you live in it."
I can even remember the days when I was of a courting age and how strongly the message was delivered about being yoked in equal fashion to someone of your own church persuasion. And I'm sure that my father would have sent a boy of another faith away had I the temerity to bring one home.
While there were lines of demarcation between Lutheran communities and Catholic enclaves for instance, there also were lines drawn between different branches of churches with the same name. As a child, my mother marveled at this distinction when an aunt came to visit (who belonged to another branch of Lutheranism) and dared not enter the family church — so strong was her devotion and will to do right. "She was curious," Mom recalls, "but she wouldn't go inside — she just peaked in the door."
Whether or not the tightness of these church lines still exists in the country is something I cannot say for sure — it seems to me they are generally more relaxed. That somewhere in our growing up years we came to the conclusion that the intricacies of our faith are worked out in our daily lives — how we treat people — more so than in the recital of a particular church creed.
My family is the only one I can speak about with first hand knowledge and I know that the prejudice toward other belief systems has certainly faded. In the Schubert clan alone, we now have a myriad of faiths represented. Lutherans are still predominant, but there now are Presbyterians, Methodists, Church of Christ, Adventists, Jews, Nazarene, Brethren, community churches without familiar names, New Agers and those who don't go to any church at all. Our roots in a loving family allow us to be curious about other beliefs, not understand some of them, and still love and respect each other. Our roots in the protestant genre allow most of us to sing the Doxology by heart when we get together for family reunion and underneath it all we know that our ties to the Divine are secure even though we may choose to worship in such a wide variety of ways.
I call this, The Family of God, pure and simple. When Jesus said, "Love one another, as I have loved you and this is the first and greatest commandment," I believe it! We have felt that kind of love in a million ways this week — from the ladies at the Lutheran church who served us dinner on Saturday to the Rosebank church which opened its doors to us.
It's another day in the country and we are grateful for all of your expressions of love — you have more than fulfilled that greatest commandment!
