Of all the things I like about summer, what I like most is that we don’t hold Sunday school. It wasn’t my idea—it’s been that way as long as I can remember.
The Sunday before Memorial Day we hold a Sunday school picnic after meeting. Each class does a recitation. It’s the same every year. The children sing “Jesus Loves Me,” though in watching them you certainly couldn’t fault Jesus if He found some of them easier to love than others. The ladies of the Mary and Martha Sunday school class recite a poem, and Bob Miles Sr., who teaches the Live Free or Die class, leads everyone in the Pledge of Allegiance. He stands on a picnic table, leads the pledge, then advises the rest of us where the food line starts, even though we’ve been lining up the same way since 1964 and could do it in our sleep.
The picnic tables are set up behind the meetinghouse, underneath the trees, alongside the parking lot. The line forms at the basketball goal, which Dale Hinshaw wants to take down so the teenagers will hang out somewhere else. The women of the Mary and Martha class are first in line, then the men of the Live Free or Die class, then the families with children, then the teenagers—who eat fast, then shoot Horse at the basketball goal.
It requires no special skill to stand in line, so no one listens to Bob Sr., which infuriates him. He wants the church to buy a bullhorn so he can be heard. He brings it up every May when we’re planning the Sunday school picnic. Says the same thing every year.
“It’s not just for the picnic. We could use it for other things. If there was civil disorder and we had to crack down, a bullhorn would come in handy.”
Bob Sr. is intrigued with the idea of the town falling into chaos and the townspeople begging him to restore order.
We tell him if he wants a bullhorn, he’ll have to buy it with his own money. He says, “You’ll be sorry. One day this town will erupt. It happened in Los Angeles. There’s no reason it couldn’t happen here. Trust me, this town is a powder keg. And when it blows, you’ll wish you had a bullhorn.”
He talks about it during Sunday school, too, which is why I welcome the summer reprieve. He talks about how America is going to pot, how young people aren’t worth a darn, how folks don’t pull together anymore, and how everyone is lazy. His answer to moral depravity is a bullhorn.
Bob Miles Sr. founded the Live Free or Die Sunday school class in 1960. Concerned about the impending Communist threat and how President Kennedy was put into office by the pope, he began the class as a watchdog group to guard against foreign infiltration at Harmony Friends Meeting. In 1960, when Nikita Khrushchev visited a pig farm in Iowa, Bob Sr. drove ten hours to hold up a sign that read LIVE FREE OR DIE. There was a picture in Time magazine of Nikita Krushchev lifting up a pig, and right behind him, Bob Sr. with his sign. Then Bob came home and the very next Sunday began the Live Free or Die class.
It is not the kind of class that attracts the current generation, who, while valuing freedom, are more interested in parenting classes and classes on biblical financial management. Bob Sr.’s class is fading, which he laments at least once a month during open worship. We sit in silence waiting for the Lord to speak, and Bob Sr. rises to his feet to warn against Communism. He writes letters to the Herald every week, which his son, Bob Jr., who does not share his father’s political philosophy, refuses to print.
But Bob Sr. is persistent. If the Herald won’t print his opinion, he’ll offer it during church, when no one can stop him, though not for lack of trying.
This past May, during the elders’ meeting, Miriam Hodge suggested naming Bob Sr. as our Official Prayer Warrior.
I thought it unwise. I thought it ill-advised to give Bob Sr. a platform. I imagined him rising to his feet during worship and ordering us to pray for a return to the gold standard.
But Miriam was one step ahead of me. “We’ll make him our Official Prayer Warrior,” she said, “but we’ll have him pray according to Scripture.”
She opened her Bible to the Gospel of Matthew and read from chapter 6, “When you pray, go into your closet and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”
Miriam said, “The only closet in the meetinghouse is down in the basement, next to the furnace. We can put him down there on Sunday mornings. He’ll be out of our hair.”
Bob Miles Sr., banished to the utility closet. A glorious thought.
That Sunday we asked him to be our Official Prayer Warrior. We could see he was intrigued with the idea of being named a warrior.
Then Miriam said, “Of course, if you’re our Official Prayer Warrior, you’ll have to pray according to Scripture.”
“What do you mean?” Bob asked. She quoted from Matthew and told him he’d have to pray in the closet down in the basement.
I could see Bob begin to waver.
“Of course,” I told him, “we’ll need to put in the bulletin that you’re the Official Prayer Warrior.”
It was then Bob Sr. felt called to the ministry of prayer.
The next Sunday he went downstairs to the utility closet, closed the door behind him, and sat on a folding chair next to the furnace. We sang our hymns, I preached my sermon without fear of rebuttal, and then we settled into silence so the Lord could speak. People were relaxed. This was wonderful. We didn’t have to worry about Bob rising to his feet and wading in. Oh, such quiet joy. One minute passed, then two.
Peace, perfect peace.
It was then we heard Bob’s voice rising up through the heating vents.
“OH, LORD, THESE ARE A STIFF-NECKED PEOPLE WHO SCORN TRUTH. STRIKE THEM DOWN IN THEIR INSOLENCE. BREAK THEIR HAUGHTY SPIRITS.”
He went on and on. We could hear each word. The heating ducts were serving as a kind of bullhorn.
Bob prayed for fifteen minutes. He beseeched the Lord to chasten us. He railed against the Communist threat. He prophesied against the New World Order and Democrats and bar codes.
Jessie Peacock, who sat over the furnace, pounded the floor with her foot. Bob prayed even louder.
“BRING THEM TO THEIR KNEES, LORD,” and “WOE TO YOU, HYPOCRITES!”
It was John the Baptist come to life.
Finally, he stopped. I prayed a closing prayer—loud, so Bob Sr. would know church was over.
Bob came upstairs. Miriam Hodge and I met him at the front door.
Miriam said, “Bob, we had in mind you’d sort of whisper your prayers.”
Bob Sr. drew himself up and stared at Miriam and said, “Warriors don’t whisper.” And he walked out the door.
The next week was the Sunday before Memorial Day. We held our Sunday school picnic. The kids sang “Jesus Loves Me.” The Mary and Martha class read a poem. Then Bob Sr. climbed up on a picnic table, cleared his throat, and led us in the Pledge of Allegiance. As it wound to a close, he made us repeat it.
“This time,” he ordered, “say it like you mean it.”
Then he said that, as the Official Prayer Warrior, he had something to say. He spoke of the sacrifice of the veterans, and how we Quakers tarnished their memories by being pacifists.
“This pacifism stuff,” he declared, “makes us look like Communists. What would happen if everyone was a pacifist?”
Asa Peacock didn’t realize it was a rhetorical question. “Peace,” he ventured.
Bob Sr. went on. Ranting against evolution and the United Nations and various Hollywood liberals.
After five minutes, I interrupted Bob to say the meal grace.
We filled our plates, then stood in line as Fern Hampton and the women of the Friendly Women’s Circle poured weak lemonade into Styrofoam cups. I took my food and my family and sat with Miriam and Ellis Hodge.
We talked about Bob Sr.
“I’ve created a monster,” Miriam said. “I never should have made him the Official Prayer Warrior.”
Ellis patted her hand. “Don’t be so hard on yourself, honey,” he told her. “Bob was a jerk long before that.”
The attendance was down the next Sunday. People were tired of Bob Sr. Tired of sitting in the silence and listening to his prayers rise up through the heat vents. I couldn’t blame them. Life is hard enough without being prayed against. I knew the time had come to speak with him. I couldn’t bear the thought of it. I hated conflict. I liked peace and quiet; that’s why I was a Quaker. But it had to be done.
I went to Bob’s house the next evening after supper. I rang his doorbell. It played the first two lines of the national anthem.
Oh, say can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s
last gleaming?
I could hear Bob Sr. singing the words inside the house. He swung open the door.
I greeted him, walked inside, and sat on the couch.
There was a picture of George Washington in his living room, over the television. George Washington giving his painful smile, like he’d stubbed his toe and was trying hard not to cuss.
All the way over, I had wondered how best to approach Bob. I decided to go with straightforward. I dreaded it, but this was no time for subtlety.
I said, “Bob Miles, your behavior has been rude, and we’re tired of it. You disrupt our worship with your prayers against us. You’re acting like a spoiled child who hasn’t gotten his way. If you don’t straighten up, you can’t be the Official Prayer Warrior.”
He rocked back in his chair and stared. He’d never been talked to this way.
He got ready to say something, but I didn’t let him. I went on. “You want everyone to do things your way, and when they don’t, you throw a fit. You talk about how this is the land of the free, but you really don’t want anyone to be free. You want everything your way. And that makes you a tyrant.”
I didn’t stay to hear his response. I was too afraid. I stood and walked out the door, went home, and went to bed. I lay there feeling guilty, wondering if I’d been too hard. I shouldn’t have called him a tyrant. Just because something is true doesn’t mean it has to be said. I didn’t sleep much.
When I got to my office the next morning, Bob was waiting for me. He was mad, I could tell. He said he wouldn’t be coming back to church. My first thought was to talk him out of it, to tell him he was welcome to stay. Then I came to my senses and recognized Bob’s departure for what it was—a gift from the Lord. So I kept quiet except to say, “Well, Bob, that is up to you. You are free to do that.”
I phoned Miriam Hodge to tell her.
“He’ll be back,” she said. “We won’t get off that easy.”
But he didn’t come that Sunday and hasn’t been back since.
I felt bad about it at first, though ours is a sweeter fellowship without him. You try to win people over with love and patience, but some people don’t want to be won over. All they want is to get their way.
I saw Bob Sr. several times over the summer at the Coffee Cup Restaurant. I’d smile and hold out my hand, but he wouldn’t take it. I invited him back to church. No thank you, he’d say. Then I got a phone call from the Baptist minister. He was telling me Bob wanted to transfer his membership to their church. He asked what Bob was like.
“Interesting,” I told him.
I wish it hadn’t come to this. I wish we could have softened him. We tried for eighty years, but failed. Now we’re giving the Baptists a crack at him. May God bless and guide them.
He might come back. Miriam Hodge said it’s happened once before. “It was during Vietnam,” she said. “He read a story about Quakers protesting the war and it set him off, but he came back. Don’t worry, he’ll be back.”
I told her I wasn’t worried.
But I am worried. I fear for his soul. I worry how God can tame such a hard and bitter pride. This callous pride, which shuts first the ear and then the heart.
With Bob Sr. gone, the Live Free or Die class is looking for someone to lead the pledge at the Sunday school picnic next year. They asked me if I could do it.
“Do I have to stand on the picnic table?” I asked.
“Sam,” they said, “stand where you feel led.”
In the end, that is what we all must do. Stand where we feel led. Stand straight, stand tall, and try hard to remember that other folks might be led to stand elsewhere.