Since, Ken started the topic of going to church when he was younger, it brought to mind a few memories from my teen years at the Haney United Church.
George Musallem owned the big local car dealership, Musallem Motors and Dad owned McDonald Fuels, so they both moved in local business circles. They both attended the Haney United Church, where most of the middle class business people went unless they were Anglicans or Catholics. When Dad first started attending the Haney United Church, George Musallem snubbed him. After a year or so, Mussallem apologized to Dad, “Sorry,” he said, “I thought you were Dave Barrett!” Barrett, who was a social worker at the Haney Correctional Institute at the time and running for MLA for the NDP, did look a bit like Dad although he was shorter, and in fact, he was Jewish. Mussallem later went on to be elected as a Social Credit MLA for Fraser Valley North.
In my last years in high school, I went to the United Church teen group, whose name has not stayed with me. The United Church was always pretty liberal. I don’t remember any religious indoctrination although we did have a short series of talks leading up to confirmation. I decided not to be confirmed, not because I rejected the values, but because I thought about it a lot and didn’t feel I was being honest to say I believed sufficiently to take part in communion. My parents said that I was thinking about it too much, but the thing was I took it very seriously, probably more than most! However, I continued to sing alto in the church choir and to teach Sunday School until I left Haney when I finished grade 12.
The teen group leaders, a married couple in their thirties, presented a variety of activities that I’m not sure how to characterize – maybe they were to help us develop good civic/progressive Christian values, prepare us for successful adult life or maybe to keep us off the streets. Haney had a bit of a reputation for teen trouble with “juvenile delinquents/hoodlums”, which included a riot one time at a drive-in at which forty youth got arrested. There wasn’t much for teens to do in Haney except go see old B Grade movies at the Haney Theatre on Friday night, or drive around in cars, a la “American Graffiti” and see who else was on the streets. Boys went to the pool hall, and a certain crowd went to The Swing Inn, a place I don’t remember my parents telling me not to go to. My girlfriends and I just knew we weren’t allowed to! My friends and I went to the show, but mostly on weekend nights, my best friend Donna and I hung out in someone’s bedroom or rec room listening to records and gossiping. We read teen screen and fashion mags, or at least I did.
Back at the United Church, our leaders often invited different adults to come and speak to the teen group. Then I guess we had refreshments. Both my father and Uncle Pete were invited to speak at the group, which was a little embarrassing, but not excruciating. No doubt, they were both speaking about politics as in their experience in the Liberal party. In Dad’s case, he may have been riffing on his great inspiration, the words of JFK: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you….” Maybe it WAS a little political. Certainly our federal MP, The Reverend Alex B Patterson, Social Credit, was never invited to speak to us!
The leaders were also religiously broad-minded. We got to go on trips to different religious institutions and learn something about them. On the first trip, we met the local priest at the local Catholic Church, a place I’d never been to before and maybe the Baptist church too. We went to Vancouver and met a rabbi, who explained some things about Judaism and I think we also went to a Buddhist or Sikh temple in Vancouver. We never learned anything like that in school in those times.
The youth group event I remember best, though, illustrates just how different the United Church always was from some churches. The speaker that night was a young guy about 22, who had just been recently released from the Haney Correctional Institute. He was sort of an exotic for those parts,”beatnik”, who’d been incarcerated for possession of marijuana, at that time punishable by up to two years in jail. I’d never heard of anyone in Haney using marijuana. It was the territory of the dreaded motorcycle gangs that existed from Vancouver East all the way through the North Fraser Valley to Mission. The ex-con just told us about his experience. I don’t remember him warning us that we should not go down his path. I think it was assumed we wouldn’t, but that we should be compassionate towards criminals and ex-cons. They weren’t such bad people really when you got to meet them and talk to them. I remember Donna and I talking after about how cute the guy was and what a shame it was that he was in jail for doing something that didn’t hurt anyone else! Whether or not that was the intended message, I don’t know.
The only other event I remember from the youth group is going in someone’s car (a few of the guys who had part-time jobs, had their own cars) to Granville Street in Vancouver to see Annette Funiccello and Frankie Avalon? in “Beach Blanket Bingo”.
I’ve come along way when I think about it!
And then, about 1965, our minister, who may or may not have been forty, quit the ministry to take up a different socially progressive job, the newly created position as “The Rentalsman” to mediate rent disputes.
I think someone once said of the United Church that they had the attitude, ” You worship God in your way and we’ll worship him in His.” Perhaps unfair.
The United Church was in some ways the default church in English speaking Canada. A columnist for the Vancouver Province (Himie Koshevoy?) wrote about signing up for the Canadian army. On the form where it said denomination he wrote “none.” The recruiting sergeant said, “I’ll put down United.”
Anne describes the church as a gathering place for middle class business people. I was told my Uncle Pete, who owned a lumber yard, complained that he could not do business with the town of Chilliwack because he did not attend the United Church.
As you would know, from your friendship with the Manleys, the United Church isn’t like that anymore. It isn’t just the done thing to do to attend. The dwindling number of people who attend it, take it seriously and take some very forward thinking positions on social issues. It’s past Canadian head, Gary Patterson, from the church I went to as a young child, St Andrew’s Wesley downtown, was the first gay minister ordained by the United Church. He attended an early women’s studies class with his then wife, or recently ex that I was in at UBC.