3

After several years of modest growth, the attendance at Harmony Friends Meeting had leveled off. The Presbyterian church had closed its door, and ten Presbyterians had wandered in the wilderness before arriving at Harmony Friends. Sam was not all that eager to take in ten people who didn’t have the gumption to keep their own church going. It was like getting ten players from a last-place team. But it looked good at the Quaker headquarters, ten new members welcomed into the meeting on one Sunday, and the superintendent had phoned Sam and asked him to give a talk on church growth at the next pastors’ conference, which Sam had agreed to do.

He had been working on the speech for several months. He called it Growth by Adoption: A New Model for Church Development. His theory, in a nutshell, was that with mainline Christianity in decline, more churches would go broke and close. If the Quakers could hang on long enough, the displaced saints would eventually make their way to a Quaker meeting. Quakers, Sam theorized, were accustomed to living close to the bone. Economic deprivation was a weekly event. But the Methodists and Episcopalians, accustomed to large numbers and wealth, had gotten soft and folded at the first sign of trouble. You cut a Quaker meeting’s budget in half, and it won’t bat an eye. The Friendly Women will throw together some chicken and noodles, hold a fund-raiser, and be back in the black within a week.

The Presbyterian church sat empty for several years, until a group from Cartersburg came, looked it over, haggled a bit, then paid nineteen thousand dollars to the Presbyterians. No one knew them, so there was much speculation among the men at the Coffee Cup over what would be done with the building. Dale Hinshaw feared they were Satan worshippers and he wanted them arrested. Harvey Muldock had read, in Reader’s Digest or TIME, he couldn’t remember where, about old church buildings in the Midwest being bought up and used as sex clubs. It was like an exercise club, Harvey recalled. People paid fifty dollars a month for a basic membership, and thirty dollars an hour for a personal trainer.

“From what I understand,” Harvey explained, “they’re claiming to be a religion and the government can’t touch ’em.”

The men contemplated that for a moment, then Myron Farlow mentioned he’d heard a liquor store was going in there. Myron owned the Buckhorn Bar, the only tavern in town, and was clearly worried about the competition.

“Yep, I heard that, too,” said Johnny Mackey. “A discount liquor store selling booze by the gallon.”

Johnny Mackey, the town’s mortician, had been mad at Myron Farlow ever since Myron’s mother had died and he’d had her cremated and her ashes distributed over the town from an airplane. Cremated, then tossed out an airplane! A loved one burnt to a turn and pitched out a window! It made Johnny nauseous just to think of it.

As is often the case, the truth was more shocking than the rumors. The Presbyterian church had been sold to Unitarians, who painted the building inside and out, removed every symbol of the Christian faith, and within a month’s time were listening to sermons about world peace, organic food, and renewable energy. They brought in folksingers from Vermont and California, had a tai chi class on Monday nights, and badgered the school board about offering a vegetarian lunch alternative for the schoolchildren.

Their pastor, a youngish man named Matt, had been a Southern Baptist minister who had read a book of liberal theology and converted to the Unitarians. He was a dazzling preacher, with a rugged jaw, a strong chin, and not an ounce of neck fat. Sam had already lost Deena Morrison and the Iverson family to the Unitarians. The Iverson twins were the only two children at Harmony Friends Meeting young enough to come down front for the children’s sermon. With them gone, Sam dropped the children’s sermon from the lineup, even though the elders had asked him not to.

“Yeah, well, it’s not them standing up there looking like an idiot when no kids come up,” he’d complained to Barbara.

Omitting the children’s sermon left him with a five-minute hole to plug. He tried adding more adjectives to his sermon, repeating key sentences, and sprinkling in a few dramatic pauses, but that added less than a minute. He had once seen a television preacher speak in tongues for several minutes and wondered if that might work. He had taken a French class in college and still remembered certain phrases. (Ou sont les toilettes les plus proches? Where is the closest restroom? Puis-je avoir du ketchup, s’il-vous-plaît? Could I have ketchup with that, please?) He was reasonably certain no one else in the congregation knew French. One Sunday, he filled the five minutes by inviting those present to stand and share their stories of spiritual renewal. Not one person spoke, not even Dale Hinshaw, who got saved once a month. It was a long, painful five minutes.

“I’ve been their pastor all these years and I ask them to talk about spiritual renewal and they sit there like lumps on a log. How’s that supposed to make me feel?” Sam complained to his wife.

“Maybe if you had given them notice the week before, they could have come prepared to talk,” she had said.

Dale had stopped by the church office the next morning to express concern about Sam’s leadership. He spoke about his childhood minister, a Pastor Johnson, a great man of God. “I tell you one thing, when he got done preaching, you knew you were a sinner, that was for sure. You may have walked in thinking you were somebody, but by the time he got done with you, you knew where you stood with the Lord, and it wasn’t good. I sure do miss him.”

Sam had finally decided to shorten the worship five minutes, which most folks seemed to appreciate.

He was trying hard to like the Unitarian pastor, but with Matt poaching his church members right and left, it wasn’t easy. Miriam and Ellis Hodge had even attended there one Sunday when their niece Amanda, away at college to study medicine, had come home for a weekend and talked them into going. Matt had given a vigorous sermon about universal health care and not one person had stood afterward to accuse him of communism. In fact, they had applauded! Sam had given more than seven hundred sermons at Harmony Friends and had never been applauded. Harvey Muldock had once said Amen! at the end of a sermon, but Sam had the sneaking suspicion he’d said it because the sermon was finally over.

Nevertheless, he invited Matt to a meeting of the ministerial association, even though Pastor Jimmy of the Harmony Worship Center had asked him not to, on account of the Unitarians not being Christian. But power has its privileges and Sam was serving as the association president that year, so had overruled him. At his first meeting, Matt had asked the other pastors for their help in organizing a parade in support of gay marriage. Right down Main Street on a Saturday morning, for all the world to see.

“Once people know the facts, they’ll change their minds,” Matt said. “And we ministers need to take the lead. Our congregations will respect us for it.”

The other pastors believed Matt was overly optimistic, if not outright delusional. Nevertheless, Sam was sympathetic to the cause, if only because Dale Hinshaw would be against it. A gay rights parade in Harmony, led by the ministers. He thought of attending, then decided against, suspecting it would be his last act as the minister of Harmony Friends Meeting, that not even Miriam Hodge could save his job.

Sam had thanked Matt for his suggestion, then suggested they give it a little more thought, maybe another year or two, or even five. Sam was hoping to keep his job long enough to get his sons through college.

Matt held the parade anyway, leading ten Unitarians up and down the sidewalk in front of the Harmony Herald office until Bob Miles came out and took their picture for that week’s paper. Dale Hinshaw was there, carrying a sign that read on one side, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” and advertised the church’s chicken noodle dinner on the other. “Come enjoy homemade chicken and noodles, pies, and cakes!! All you can eat for $7.50, tea or lemonade included!”

The Herald was swamped with letters to the editor, running three to one against the Unitarians. Predictions of their eternal damnation were made, along with several invitations to leave town. Pastor Jimmy at the Harmony Worship Center launched a ten-week sermon series on biblical marriage, culminating in a visit from an evangelist who had been gay before getting right with the Lord and becoming a heterosexual. Bob Miles was elated. It had been years since any single picture had generated such excitement, not since Nora Nagle had portrayed the Virgin Mary in the annual Christmas pageant wearing nothing but a bathrobe.

Sam lay low, working on his church growth speech, avoiding his office so as not to get roped into conversation. But Barbara was tired of holding her tongue and wrote to the Herald, applauding the Unitarians and welcoming them to town. It infuriated Fern Hampton, who called for Barbara’s expulsion from the Friendly Women’s Circle. Sam’s mother, Gloria, was mortified. Her own daughter-in-law exiled, banished from the Circle. Providentially, Miriam Hodge called for a committee to be formed to examine the matter, thereby ensuring nothing would happen.

Three women of the Circle left to join the Harmony Worship Center, and the Unitarian church gained five new members, Democrats from Cartersburg. Thankfully, it was autumn, the Corn and Sausage Days Festival was fast approaching, as was the Chicken Noodle Dinner, and passions cooled with the shortening days.