What I heard in church

I have no recollection of first attending church.  Presumably I was taken from earliest childhood.I remember the name of the minister, Rev. Orthner, who was there as late as 1952 or 1953, but nothing else.I do remember Rev. Paul Edwardson, who was there as early as 1953.  He played trumpet and was quite tall.

The various ministers brought in some folksy humour, based on their farming background during the Dirty Thirties.I think it was Edwardson who told us that a fellow student at agricultural college was voted most likely to “sack seed.”

Our church hosted a variety of touring preachers and speakers.  I have mentioned the woman who told us she was a former member of the Communist Party, USA.  She, or another of these speakers, had some problem with their airplane in Haney, or maybe Mission.  McNair suggested this could be the result of sabotage by a Communist, as Haney (or Mission) was the headquarters of the Communists in BC.

Another visitor, evidently aware that some of the congregation had been raised as German-speaking Mennonites, used the word “freud” to amplify his use of the word joy.  I remember my Aunt Marie was not happy with this.  “He shouldn’t have said that.”  I am guessing that much of our family came to an English speaking church to further assimilate into Canadian society and they were sensitive about their status as foreigners, people who might have the slur “DPs” directed at them.
One visiting preacher decried the fact that a 17 year old young man could get a job in a saw mill and earn $10,000.00 a year.  Presumably this would undermine the authority of men who were older than him.

You are all familiar with the preacher who says, “Can I get an amen?” and the animated religious services we have seen in movies and on TV.  Our church was much more staid.  There was one man, Mr Dyck, (this was a common name, but he was the eldest and an elder of the church) who would, from time to time, would say a thoughtful and sonorous “amen.”  But that was it.

I have mentioned that McNair urged church members to vote for Alex Patterson, the Social Credit MP, as he was a Christian minister.  This benign view did not extend to Tommy Douglas, who was, after all, a Baptist minister. Nor was Martin Luther King, a Baptist minister and the leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, ever mentioned in our church.

To be continued