According to the teachings of our church, the earth was a few thousand years old, not millions or billions. So it was an unpleasant surprise for them when an archeological dig in the Fraser Canyon suggested that there were people living in the canyon about 7,000 years ago. (My recollection suggested that the figure was 30,000 years, but the report in the Chilliwack Progress gives the 7,000 year figure). Our minister, Rev. McNair, told us we could ignore these findings. It was just a few ashes. It’s not easy for a church to shift ground on something like their belief around the age of the earth. Many young people would find it easy to accept the change. But what about church members who have believed the church’s teaching for fifty or sixty years, or more? Can the church suddenly announce a change? I don’t know what the teaching of the Alliance church is currently regarding the age of the earth. By now they must have shifted. But it can’t have been easy.
Anne reminds me of a story I told about a man in our church who got involved in something do do with visits from aliens. I remember him from Sunday School. Then I guess he wasn’t there for a while, but this did not register with me until I saw a report in the local paper about a meeting with someone who offered us a recipe that had been brought to earth by aliens. Our former church member was mentioned for his involvement in the meeting.His wife and sons continued on in our church. They were not ostracized for the unusual beliefs of their family member.
When McNair denounced Tom Paine from the pulpit I went to the local library and got a book of his writings. I was inclined to move away form my church affiliation. Not for any profound or principled reason, but because I wanted to have fun and fit in at school. Within a year or two I stumbled on Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not a Christian.
“Elvis Presley’s going to die some day,” McNair thundered one Sunday morning. On that one he was 100% right. But I remember another prediction that turned out not to be true. Explaining that dancing was a sin, he told us that when a couple were dancing, the man might take liberties with the woman. “You’d never see two men dancing together like that.” Within ten years I had seen men dancing together like that.
The Kennedy/Nixon presidential race in 1960 was a big deal in our church. In memory it seems that we were warned, week after week, about the danger of a Catholic becoming president of the US. All I can be sure of is that it was more than once. It is unlikely that anyone in our church had a vote in any US election, but the denomination was centred in the US and I guess the various ministers were asked to get out the word.
I have long ago rejected what I was taught in church. But the music I learned stays with me to this day.
2 thoughts on “What I heard in church, III”
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I hadn’t seen this piece. The prediction about Elvis made me laugh out loud. I find with these memoirs that a lot of things are quite funny now although at the time they were dead serious.
I also remember the warnings about a Catholic president. I don’t however, remember the church member who was interested in aliens of the galactic kind. Elvis would die….how prescient. (sarcasm).