Calvinist Conundrums

So what exactly is a conundrum, should we find ourselves in one? Can't help it--this morning, it's just plain on my mind, and I've got to deal with it. "A riddle," an on-line thesaurus/dictionary says, "the answer to which involves a pun or play on words, as What is black and white and read all over? A newspaper."

"I met a girl in a revolving door, and I been going around with her ever since." Ha, ha. 

Not in my dictionary. A conundrum carries with it a bit of a headache, a puzzle all right, a position one gets him or herself into unintentionally and wishes he or she hadn't but hasn't the smarts or the guts or the wherewithal to get out. A conundrum is a puzzler all right, it's like hemorrhoids--there's no such thing as relief. That's a conundrum.

But then this on-line thesaurus/dictionary offers a second definition, this one so absurdly generalized as to be useless. Still, it's better: "2. anything that puzzles." 

Still sounds pollyannaish, to edgy-cute to have meaning. In my book, conundrums don't arrive with giggles. 

I like Merriam-Webster's definition far better: "an intricate and difficult problem" and then she adds, "a problem that has only a conjectural answer." That's much better. Besides, how often do you get the chance to use the word conjectural, a real tongue-twister, in any given 24-hour period?

See that deflated toothpaste tube up there--that thing, just like every other one like it, presents a ritual morning conundrum for me. Honestly, even though there's nothing in that tortured tube anymore, it still takes good time to position my thumb and forefinger in such a way as to squeeze (that's an action verb) a tiny bit of Crest from that car-wreck tube. 

But I try, and I try, and I try--and a week later I'm still getting a bit of a blob out. Drives me perfectly nuts: I hate doing it, but I'm powerless to stop. There's a nickel-and-dime Dutch consciousness in me that says one really can't toss the dumb thing until every last bit of it lines up on the brush, every centimeter, every dab, every dash, every dollup. No matter how much anger rises in me as, one more time I squeeze whatever's left in the tube because I can't toss the dumb thing until I'm doggone sure there's nothing, absolutely nothing, left. "Think of the Korean children," my mother would say a lifetime ago. 

That is a conundrum: I can't stand getting the last iota of Crest from a wreck of a tube, but neither can I toss the dumb thing. 

That's a conundrum because, even if it's just a little, it hurts, as conundrums do, like finding yourself between a rock and hard place.

Maybe it's the Calvinist in me that absolutely can't toss the tube until the very last stub sits on the bristles. Maybe it's the Calvinnist in me that wants to define a conundrum as somehow painful. Maybe I'm just too much a victim of too finely tuned Calvinist.

But if you feel your heart and soul stretched benevolently toward my morning ritual horror, just go ahead and park that benevolence elsewhere. You'll be happy to know that right there on the corner of the bathroom sink is a new tube full. I'm home free.

For a while.     

Morning Thanks--cone flowers

 

Should you wonder, the answer is yes, we do we have cone flowers.

So, answer me this--what's not to like? Look at this one--there's something almost Barbie-ish about the way her skirt flares. She looks as if she's seen the seasons' indomitable movie and rather enjoys reliving it.

But seriously, what's not to love?

Out back in our yard these days, it's a corn flower carnival. They're everywhere. Okay, they get a lift from the birds, come winter, but what was once a bunch--we probably paid $5 for it--is now a slew, a legion, a mob. They're everywhere. They've taken over. Even weeds cower (some anyway). 

They get their rather pedestrian name from the creation you see here--that stubby cone that forms at the hub of things, a butterfly's delight. I hate to admit it, but cone flowers are rather pedestrian, rather ordinary--I mean if I can engineer a backyard full, anyone can. They're sunflowers really, or second cousins anyway, and they need absolutely no tending because they are fully licensed independent operators. This summer there are hundreds in our backyard acre, and I didn't do a thing to put them there or keep them there. This wet summer at least, they don't need watering, never do. What's not to love?

This one is an adolescent, I think, still trying to figure out who he (or she) is. Maybe right here in our backyard we've got a trans. I'll keep an eye out. 

Meanwhile, they've taken over, and the best is yet to come. This blessed carnival isn't our work--not by a long shot. Come winter, when the color is long gone, our backyard birds do a deep dive into all those cones to get at the seeds, which they digest and--well, you know, thereby creating the cone flower throng we've got now. Next year, the congregation will be even bigger. They'll be an army.

But that's okay. It's August now, and I'm tired of picking weeds--more cone flowers means less Adam's curse. 

I really tried to get a show-stopping shot of this monarch who came to feast yesterday; he was okay with sitting for the camera but reluctant to show off, so I didn't catch her (or him) at full wingspan. 

The plight of these world-travelers is well-known. I was pleased with her stopping yesterday--we don't see them often, despite a harvest of milkweed out back. That our almost embarrassing abundance of cone flowers was of interest--she stayed for ten minutes at least--was a blessing.

All those coneflowers are native, which in a way explains their abundance. They lived here long before we did. They've taken over, reclaimed the ground. 

Soon the dawn will sneak in slowly from its own first light, brightening the inky blackness to my right into a shadowy outline. Soon enough the carnival will start up again, and it'll be a show.

These cone flowers--I hesitate to call them ours--are my morning thanks.

Where Dad grew up

Lucas CRC, Lucas, MI

I know I was there before, but I honestly have no idea when. My guess is that, years ago, I escaped the writing conference at Calvin for a day, took off in whatever rental car I was driving, and headed up north toward a place named Lucas, Michigan. The son of a preacher, my dad might have some hesitation about calling Lucas home, but that's where Grandpa Schaap held forth when my dad was a boy, one of three Schaap boys, all of whom spoke fondly of Lucas and "the Lucas church," when the name or place found its way into the merry-making at family gatherings.

 

Uncle Jay especially had the stories, stories of the Schaap boys, who weren't always the angels the preacher's sons were ordained to be. I'm quite sure I never heard all of the stores--some never got repeated, I'm sure--but between my dad and his brothers, it seemed to me that, had I asked, Dad would have chosen Lucas as his hometown because that's where he grew up.

It's not an ambiguous phrase really, but it means more than the words say--"where he grew up." What he meant was a good deal more than simply surpassing scratched-in pencil marks on a door frame. I'm thinking it might well have been the place where he pushed his way out of childhood innocence and stumbled like a newborn calf into a life that's a whole lot bigger and wider, less of a romp and more of a mystery. It's where he came of age.

We had to search to find it. In fact we had to ask--twice--because it seems to me that Lucas CRC is--or was--a country church, a big white, old-fashioned place built out in the country where the farmers who made up the congregation tended their cows. Today, it stands up the street a ways from what seemed to us to be the town, but the Lucas church wasn't new--it wasn't some modern design in brick or Lanin stone. It was white, frame, barn-like really. I'm sure it was the same building that stood there long ago when my dad was a boy, a century ago.

Uncle Jay remembered every last naughty thing he and his friends--the Meekhof boys, I remember--pulled off, but the Lucas story that arose about (but rarely from) Dad was something about a sled and a winter accident that happened because Dad was being reckless--or at least more reckless than Mom and Dad (the Dominie and his juffrouw) expected of him. The story was about a sled and an accident and all of it happened right across the road from the Lucas church on or just off of that steep hill, across the street from the Lucas parsonage, which is still there today. 

I wish I knew  the story. What I know is that once upon a time he got hurt when he wasn't being as careful as he should have been, and it happened right there near the church and parsonage. 

Two men were laying new flooring in the parsonage the morning we got off the freeway to look for Lucas. The parsonage looked vacant. I couldn't help wondering whether the congregation was hoping new flooring in the old place would make a call a bit more enticing.

Not long ago, Dad's birthday passed without me saying much at all about it--even thinking about it. It's July 26, a date I'll always remember, even when I forget. He might well say something different, but I can't help thinking that I'm far more like him than either of us might care to admit. 

He was born in 1918, which means he'd be 105 years old were he still around. But he isn't. And he wasn't a couple of weeks ago on that bright, sunny morning we stopped at the church and parsonage where he grew up. In Lucas, MI, what little I know of that sledding accident is all that remains of him or his time there. No one in the old folks home, in all likelihood, would remember him, much less my grandfather's serious pulpit carriage.

All that life has passed away, gone forever. Had we been able to get into the old church, we may have found Grandpa Schaap's picture hanging in the consistory room, along with a gallery of other old bucks. Then again, maybe some folks took them all down--"nobody sees them anyway," someone might have said.

All things must pass, say the Beatles and the Bible. It's a note that might have been sung in the old church a thousand times in its 150 years, a truth my dad might have noted a dozen times at least during after devotions after supper.

Frequent repetition doesn't make the truth any easier to take when you stand out on the sidewalk of the church your Grandpa once led and look over the driveway at the parsonage where your dad's room, upstairs, was in a place I think I could find on my own, even though I've never been inside.

"All things must pass/all things must pass away."

I hope you had a happy birthday, Dad. Sorry about forgetting. BTW, we stopped in Lucas last week . . .

This morning, I'm thankful for a fragment of a story I barely remember in a place we visited, just for a few minutes, a week or so ago.

The parsonage where Dad grew up

"The Sioux Center Affair" (end)

It's almost impossible to follow the long succession of charges and counter-charges that banged along between synods and classes, between what once was the Teachers Meeting and the Consistory, and what became Sioux Center I and Sioux Center II. It's tedious and tiring, maybe especially so when the history abides faithfully to a theory that the historian's job, first and foremost, is to present the facts only.

Let me attempt to end this without venturing further into the weeds of a story probably best tucked away another century in some rusty file drawer. Once money became part of the Sioux Center Affair, it just about took over the tale. It wouldn't have, of course, if so much water hadn't gone over the dam already, but it did because the financial burden on whoever was going to pay whom what lump sum was substantial. No ruling elders wanted to soak their congregations, and Synod apparently felt that once the problem was all about cold, hard cash, the courts not the church had most effective jurisdiction.

So the remainder of the story of the establishment of two Christian Reformed churches in a tiny little Dutch hamlet in the far northwest corner of Iowa is an almost endless series of charges and counter-charges, of applications for loans and ample rejections thereof, of courts and Synods and Classes, of two bodies of believers stubbornly unwilling to pay the price of their own warfare in filthy lucre. 

Eventually, the loan [to secure funds for a new church] was funded locally, and the building now occupied by Covenant Christian Reformed Church, was begun in 1929 and completed at an approximate cost of $23,000. With the dedication in February, 1930, in people's minds if not in their hearts, the Sioux Center affair finally came to a close after a full decade of contention and dissension.

The best we can say is--thank the Lord!--it ended. Today, on Sunday, my wife and I worship in that church. 

Van Dyke's telling is heartless, but I don't mean it in a traditional sense. It's not heartless in its pursuit of the truth, but in its avoidance of anything subjective, anything that might be categorized as conjecture on his part, his determination not to introduce the central characters. 

At the end of his long and wonderful tale, Professor Van Dyke lists a number of "what ifs." One of them involves two preachers whose names he does mention at times, although not extensively nor exhaustively. Still the single question suggests that would we be listening to someone who remembered the whole sordid affair instead of a professor of history writing three-quarters of a century later, the tale might well have been told significantly different. "What if De Leeuw had played the role of pastor instead of partisan?" Van Dyke asks. "What if Ypma had not consistently pursued a hard line during negotiations?"

What those questions intimate is the possibility that either or both of those pastors play an outsized role in the decades-long feud. At least in the mind of the historian, the questions are--and were, back then in the 1920s--worth asking. Rather than pursue them however, Van Dyke's do-no-harm methodology keeps him from speculating.

And I certainly don't want to blame some individual or individuals for the decade-long debacle that Christian Reformed people not only suffered but, in fact, perpetuated. What I'm saying is that that level of anger and resentment, all that (do-I-dare-say?) hatred, all that animosity had to originate in human hearts and souls, in ordinary human beings, all of whom were most probably more sure of their own righteousness than they might have been. There's more to the story, I'm sure, something Van Dyke knew as he was assembling the narrative because what I remember him telling me is that the silence concerning the subject was profound and would not be dismissed. 

Over the weekend, one of the lawyers for Donald Trump rode the circuit of talk shows pressing the claim that whatever Donald Trump says, on-air or on-line, stands firmly under the first amendment. The lawyer's attempt to focus the judgments to come as "freedom of speech" questions may be right, but those claims originate in the personality of a man who, having just been admonished in a court of law not to speak out the way he always does, did so anyway. "If you come after me," he wrote, "I'll come after you." To say that the indictments leveled by the Department of Justice are in fact about the First Amendment is but half-truth when they do not take to mind the person who spoke those words. 

When I characterize Van Dyke's history as being "heartless," I don't mean to say that he shows no empathy or compassion, that somehow he's unrelenting in his criticism of what went on in a church in Sioux Center Iowa, a church, for years, split like a ripe melon. What I mean is the opposite really--by training as well as by his position in the congregation itself that was right then celebrating its history, his reluctance to talk about the actors--any of them really--as admirable as it was in 1993 and even today, yields a narrative that seems almost lifeless, displaying so little humanity.

And yet, it's worth my time and yours, maybe as much now as ever in the face of another season of "contention and dissension." Writing in the late 80s and early 90s, thirty years ago, about events that transpired a hundred years ago, Van Dyke says in his summary conclusion, "The underlying cause of the matter was a fundamental disagreement as to how the congregation was to maintain its orthodoxy in time of cultural change."

Some things haven't changed.

"The Sioux Center Affair" (viii)

When the 1924 Synod met in Kalamazoo, it found, once more, that "the Sioux Center Affair" was there again like a reoccurring toothache. This time, the petitioner was the group that had--five years previous--been the Teachers Meeting, although as you might imagine, the issues now went farther and deeper into the hearts and minds of the two warring sides. If we can gauge Synod's attitude on its behavior that year, it's not difficult to gather that they were utterly sick of the whole darn business. The 1924 Synod slapped everybody; but the congregation of the new consistory got taken out to the woodshed and told to take this matter of who owed how much to whom--the somewhat new money angle--back home with them and settle the mess in their own backyard. 

They were assigned an impressive group of solid denominational officers to advise them, a list that included, by the way, Rev. J. B. Hulst whose grandson of the same name eventually became President of Dordt College. That may be the sole delightful story in this never-ending tale.

The former Teachers Meeting's continuing recalcitrance is astounding. They told the assigned committee--which included J. B. Hulst!--to go blow, at which point those very officers told them that their intemperate non-compliance could get them tossed from the CRC.

Big deal, the congregation said. If we don't get our way, go ahead and give us the boot.

Meanwhile, back home in Sioux Center, the two sides started talking about the possibility of having two churches in one building, one of them Dutch-speaking (that one known today as First CRC), the other regularly meeting in English (that one known as Bethel CRC). Once more, however, it was filthy lucre that refused to give peace a chance--specifically who was going to pay who what. The property, including the church itself, brick-and-mortar kept peace at bay. The only way to determine what needed to be determined was to put the whole mess into civil court, despite the ardent biblicism of both groups, both of whom were painfully aware of the New Testament admonitions not to do what they did.

As one can imagine, the court's rulings didn't put out the fires, and therefore had negligible effects on the litigants, half of whom had already tossed Synod's assessments aside in a huff. Thus, most of 1925, Van Dyke says, was spent preparing yet another approach to Synod, as well as forestalling what they could of the pending court rulings. 

It is hereby declared to be the intention of all of the parties to this agreement that the entire matter of the controversy between first and second parties as to the organization of a church corporation and financial settlement between second parties and first parties shall be submitted for final adjudication to the 1926 Synod of the Christian Reformed Church.  

The prairie fire in Sioux Center had now been raging for seven years, which sounds almost biblical. You can't help but imagine that the 1926 Synod would might have paid to be able to give the whole mess over to the RCA, which wouldn't have worked either, however, since the litigants could not have belonged to a fellowship who wasn't Reformed (bad joke maybe, but this tale seems never-ending).

This time, Synodical proceedings were held in Chicago for most of the month of June. Things got especially tedious, especially when viewed a century after the fact. Here's how Van Dyke attempts to draw out the mess: "Curiously, while Synod 1926 criticized the work of the Committee of 1922, and it rescinded the decision of 1924, it proceeded to implement the finds of the Synodical Committee of 1922." Once more, Synod attempted to draw up a scenario by spreading the financial bill around the denomination--the CRC would kick in $7500 to help salve the financial woes that fell to Bethel, the original church consistory. 

At this point, suffice it to say that the 1926 Synod's ruling did very little to bring peace, not because whatever they'd ruled or advised was bad but because the lines in the sand had, in all that time, grown into ever-looming stone fortifications. Eagle-eyed members of both groups hunted out means by which to avoid doing what Synod--and the courts--had advised. 

When the congregation at Bethel determined that it had little choice in the matter, they set about to raise funds to fulfill what others considered their financial obligation to the upstart congregation--$12,500. That ask failed miserably when the congregation coughed up only $2,500, leaving them 10 thousand in arrears. The consistory returned to the congregation with three options by which they could meet the obligations Synod had assigned. The congregation voted them down, all of them. 

When the new consistory at First CRC saw Bethel's payment deadline (as assigned by Synod) come and go, they simply let Bethel's consistory know that they had initiated court proceedings "asking for a judgment for the entire 20 thousand." Hearing of such, Synod politely stepped away from its role as mediator, given the fact that, at this point, the courts, they said, had been enlisted to settle the mess. 

Brickbats continued to fly, back and forth, back and forth, because it was clear that someone was going to have to pay someone else for something they really didn't feel was right or just or Godly. On July 25, 1927 (that's not a typo), the First Sioux Center consistory was "advised" by it lawyer that the congregation "must pay" $12,500 and $7500 dollars by January 1, 1928 (yes, 28!). "If this is not done," the note said, the Second Congregation has the right. . .to sell the church property by Sheriff's sale." Happy new year!

Honestly, I never thought it would take this long to "summarize" the embattled years of the early Christian Reformed church--and churches--of Sioux Center. As you can imagine, it's not over yet.

Sunday Morning Meds--Frettin'

This meditation is a decade old. I remember it well because I hoped my mother would never read it. The heft of the idea would likely not have changed a bit in the decade that has passed, even though her adulation of Fox News was a phenomenon that predated Donald J. Trump. If she'd lived to watch him descend the elevator, I can't imagine that she wouldn't be a Trump-er, despite (or "because of," she'd say) her ample religiosity. 

 “Do not fret because of evil men

 or be envious of those who do wrong. . .”

The only fret I have is whether I do enough frettin’.  

Take my mother—she’s sure that the world is slowly sinking toward a moral morass, some iniquitous black hole that will eventually suck most all of us in, until, gloriously, the Lord, in glory, comes again.  She frets about the seamy appearances she watches on her TV, and her continual frettin’ affects her mood--or so says her son. 

She’s old enough to deserve my respect no matter what her views or how much she frets; besides, she’s my mother.  But I’m not taken by the way she flirts with her obsessions because I don’t think she should spend the last years of her life frettin’.

We live in strange times. I don’t think it’s possible to locate an era in the last decade or so when spirituality in general and Christianity in particular was ever quite so popular.#  The vast majority of Americans, unlike citizens of any other nation, claim to believe in God.  A significant majority go to worship frequently.  Crime is down, as is drug use, as is teen-age pregnancy.  Even abortion rates are lower than they were.##

 On the campus where I teach, just about every student wears a t-shirt with a Bible verse.  Students flock to praise-and-worship gatherings and exude a piety that existed only among the most devout just twenty years ago.  Lots of parents tell me their kids are far more spiritually mature at 18 than they were at that age. 

 Politically, the U. S. government is in the hands of Republicans, my mother’s party.#  Many politicos and pundits claim the last Presidential election was a wake-up call to many opinion-leaders who never took Christians seriously.  Most major newspapers now concede that for too long they didn’t have a clue about what was going on in the hearts and heads of a significant segment of their own readership—American evangelicals. 

 It’s difficult to argue, I think, that we’re all going to hell in a handbasket, although sometimes I think my mother would like to think so.  Specifically, what troubles her is that this Christian nation is becoming secular, forbidding prayer in schools and tolerating abortion, tossing the Ten Commandments and, in its place establishing, “political correctness.” 

 I think she’s frettin’ way too much.  She thinks I’m worse—liberal. 

 When Black Sunday came to the Great Plains, when clouds of dust arose from recently plowed Oklahoma land and swept all the way up into South Dakota like a murky blizzard, lots of good people presumed the world was at end.  Not long ago, a woman told me that she had a childhood memory of looking up at the preacher in the little country church she attended and, on Black Sunday, seeing only the preacher’s white collar.

When things got dark, good people thought we’d finally come to end times.  It’s understandable, but it didn’t happen.  Most believers I know plot out the trajectory of our lives in the same direction—things are just getting worse and worse. 

 Maybe not.  But then, as I said, maybe I just don’t fret like she does.  Maybe I will in just a few years.###

 But I know this—both Mom and I can take heart from verse one of Psalm 37, which says, in a nutshell, “don’t do that.”  The enemy—whoever they are—aren’t worth my time or anxiety, nor are they worth hers. 

 I’ll quote that verse to her.  Maybe it will help. 

I doubt it. 

Probably not.  She’ll probably still think I’m a liberal.

_________________________ 

#Most recent surveys conclude otherwise today, ten years later--the number of people who claim allegiance to Christianity is most definitely fading.

##If I'm not mistaken, all of those statistics still hold true. 

###Last week in New York, a riot took place when some social media king said he was giving away electronic equipment. A riot--it was plain nuts, kids recording the whole thing on their smart phones. What's with kids these days, I asked myself. I'm frettin'. I'm old.   

You can read Mom's obituary here. 

"The Sioux Center Affair" (vii)

 In April of 1921, the synodical deputies announced that seven members of the original Consistory were "deposed," lost their jobs, an action that Church Order made clear should have happened in a meeting in which they deposed were present. Hadn't happened. Half the church, eighty families, as well as the Consistory and their families, refused to accept their deposition. Those families decided to meet for worship in what was then the Sioux Center Town Hall, to take their case back to the denominational Synod, and to say goodbye to the Sioux Center Classis and simply enlist in Classis Orange City, who'd taken up the Town Hall group's cause by lodging protests and assigned them "spokesmen" to aid the group in forming a new congregation, as well as providing them with pulpit supply until the Town Hall-ers could call their own undershepherd. 

Meanwhile, the old Teachers Meeting group voted in their own new consistory and, of course, opened up the Sunday School once again, using the new constitution of course. In a move that, a century later, seems totally bizarre, the new church told the Orange City Classis that the Town Hall group wasn't really a congregation at all--no one, after all, had been kicked out and that they (Orange City Classis) had been in error in taking them in because they were still members of the original church.

In June, Classis Sioux Center met in Rock Valley to try to create order from the chaos. The Town Hall-ers claimed they wanted reconciliation, but they wanted a peace created on the basis of their original determination--that the Teachers Meeting publicly confess their sin, going way back to that Christmas service debacle. Besides, the argued, as Van Dyke puts it, "They were the legal congregation because they stood for true Reformed principles."

Classis Sioux Center, as you can imagine, didn't take kindly to being accused of poor judgment. What's more, they determined that there was no evidence that the Teachers Meeting descendants were at all interested in reunification. The best resolution, at least for the present, was for the separate bodies to continue to meet on their own until the 1922 Synod could meet and sort things out. 

Meanwhile, the Town Hall group decided they needed a minister so they called a pastor from the Worthington, MN church, a Rev. Ypma, who accepted. Thus, in the fall of 1922, the Town Hall group--led by the old Consistory--became a separate church. For the time being, no new action was taken, which doesn't mean there was peace around town, I'm sure.

It just so happened that the 1922 Synod of the CRC met in Orange City. After lengthy wrangling Synod ruled that the action taken by the breakaway group--deposing the old consistory--was illegal, as was the new congregation's manner of meeting without members of the old Consistory's following. But the original Consistory was also admonished for secretive meetings that excluded members of the church--and the pastor--they were supposed to serve. 

In short, here's the score after Synod 1922:

1-the Teachers Meeting was wrong in deposing the rightly-constituted Consistory;

2-The office bearers selected from the original nominations from the Old Consistory were the rightful office-bearers.

3-Should there be two Sioux Center Churches, the half of the congregation to come from the original Teachers Meeting should give financial aid for the purpose of building a church. 

Van Dyke claims that the Synod, even if it met locally, because, for all practical purposes, the horse was already out of the church barn. A kind of roughshot settlement had arisen as both parties began to work at their own agendas. Ruling as they did, Synod attempted to right past wrongs in good fashion; however, for all practical purposes going back was not now where this battered church was. Already, there were two congregations. Practically speaking, there would be no peace moving backwards. The only hope was a new beginning from a defined split.

That third synodcal ruling, Van Dyke says, was "the source of much future dissension." Now, that there was money involved, the acrimony would almost certainly, require different arbitrators. Now, the courts would be involved, even though traditional piety on both sides maintained that brothers in Christ had no business using courts to solve their problems. 

The disgruntlement, the outright hostility that had already taken up two long years, required multiple meetings of multiple classis and two annual denominational Synods, but it was about to enter a whole new venue.  

"The Sioux Center Affair" (vi)

WWI battlefield, still visible

By January of 1921, what seemed obvious to the Sioux Center CRC Consistory was just as obvious to whatever portion of the church had been engaged by controversies now almost two years old--God's people were hopelessly rent asunder. "A number of people," Van Dyke says, "began to voice the opinion that, because of the unrest and turmoil, it would be better if the congregation would split."

The plan devised by the Consistory declared the brokenness was created by the issue of language, Dutch or English, an explanation that seems, at best, half-truth.  But there was still this matter of the annual congregational meeting the Consistory had canceled. That meeting was rescheduled for February 19, a month later. In anticipation thereof, the Consistory set before the congregation the original slate of candidates for church office. In just a few days, 65 letters of complaint were sent to the Consistory, who simply put them aside.

Suffice it to say that meeting didn't go well either. Some members walked out in disgust during the final song and prayer. Ouch. The rebel Teachers (and their considerable following) were in no way appeased.

Our dear Reformed principles, for which our pious fathers kept their lives pure, in order to be able to pass them on as an inheritance to their descendants. to regain possession of them, for that we fight, whatever the cost. 

Thus saith the not-so-loyal opposition. 

A month later, March of 1921, Classis Sioux Center rode into town, but their declarations did little to quell the bedlam. Classis found it difficult to support splitting a congregation over the language issue, when most neighborhood congregations were vexed by the same problem but weren't falling apart. What's more, Classis was sympathetic with the dissenters' view that the congregational meeting should have been postponed and a new slate of nominations drawn up, a list created by the members at large.

The Consistory huddled, then declared they were packing up and taking the whole mess to Synod, citing, now, Classis' violation of Article 97 or the Acts of Synod of 1888 (look it up for yourself). And, the Consistory said, there was the original sin of the Teachers Meeting: they'd created a mess and a lie right there in front of the entire congregation in the worst Christmas program ever. That provocation (9th commandment) was--none should forget!--a public sin demanding public confession!

Meanwhile, the March Classis meeting had also resulted in the formation of a seven-man classical committee enjoined to bring peace where the war was raging. Those deputies scheduled a prayer meeting the night before another congregational meeting, this one sure to be messy again. Those deputies, operating under cover, also, surreptitiously, met with Rev. DeLeeuw and a sympathetic elder to talk about deposition--that's right, deposing the Consistory. To that end, the classical deputies then called the Consistory in to chat about (gulp!) the possibility of their resignation.

That didn't go well either. 

The Consistory determined taking their objections to the next Synod. At the same time they set out a course to dissolve the church's membership in Classis Sioux Center in order join the Orange City Classis, where they'd been assured they would find a goodly number of like minds.

Let me just add here that Professor Van Dyke, a good friend, was devoted to establishing his own historical objectivity. What's more, it was written for the congregation some 70 years after the tribulation. I say that because his descriptions of the events often feel colorless--that's not a criticism. His way of telling this terrible story is a Sgt. Friday historiography--"just the facts, ma'am." Doubtless, personalities played a significant role on both sides of the abyss, but very few participants are identified or described, not even Pastor De Leeuw. Who those personalities were and how they acted is simply not there, not a matter of public record. 

Professor Van Dyke told me back then that he was amazed how closed-mouthed old folks were about what they may have heard 70+ years before. To his credit, he must have found it difficult to create descriptions of the real warriors on both sides when descendant congregational members still sat their in the pews.

Still, I find it amazing that, a century later, what Dr. Lou Van Dyke committed to paper is the only story of that frightful time in congregational history, a time everyone but the participants likely wanted badly to forget.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. 

Yesterday's huge news

Donald J. Trump at Dordt University, January 23, 2017

I didn't see the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11/2001. Let me take that back--I didn't see the collapse until hours later. No matter, really. When I did, the world was still stunned into silence.

No single building was attacked yesterday. The Washington Monument--and Lincoln and the Vietnam War Memorial--all the commemorative spots in the nation's Capital are in one piece this morning. Nothing happened yesterday to compare with what happened on September 11, 2001, a day those who were awake to the events have imprinted on their memories.

But I'm interrupting a series of posts about the sad goings-on at Sioux Center Christian Reformed Church because I'm convinced that what happened yesterday in this nation is just as significant a event as the catastrophic fall, under attack, of the Twin Towers in New York City. It demands our close attention: a former President of these United States was indicted by a grand jury who had listened to evidence provided to them by Special Council Jack Smith, a Department of Justice attorney. 

Yes, it wasn't Trump's first indictment--it was his third, to be exact, and yet another is expected as soon as this week. More than a few news outlets led with this line: "Trump Indicted Again. .  ." It's almost impossible to read that line, the last word especially, and not roll your eyes, a perfectly human reaction because ever since he and his wife descended that Trump Tower elevator to announce his candidacy for the Presidency of these United States, Donald J. Trump has totally obliterated any other newsmaker, just as his candidacy and his Presidency totally dominated news coverage. Nothing about him is small; nothing he does originates from an unplugged mic. 

Here's the lay of the land. A former President of the United States has been charged with conspiracy to defraud the nation "by using dishonesty, fraud and deceit to obstruct the nation’s process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election"; by conspiracy to impede the Jan. 6 congressional proceeding; by a conspiracy against the right to vote and to have that vote counted; and by obstruction of, and attempt to obstruct and impede, the certification of the electoral vote.

That's what happened yesterday. That's where we are this morning, a place the American people have never, ever been before. We are living through an astounding moment in American history, something that not only rivals but exceeds 9/11 in its gravity and danger to our way of life, to democracy itself. 

I turned to Fox News yesterday, where the commentators were making claims that what the DOJ was doing was charging the former President with behavior that falls firmly under the aegis of his First Amendment rights, the right to free speech, intimating that it was clear to them that the charges would not hold up in court because they were merely a matter of politics, Trump being the clear front-runner in the 2024 Republican Presidential sweepstakes. The only reason they're going after him, Fox's people say, is because he's winning. 

And more. Fox's hosts and guests are convinced that the very same U. S. Department of Justice has fabricated these charges to cover up the much more heinous behavior of one Joe Biden, who along with his drug-addled, criminal son Hunter, undertook and accomplished an immense grift, millions of dollars in bribes and payoffs. 

According to Fox, the compelling story yesterday was not what Donald J. Trump might have done, but what a corrupt government in Washington had already done to keep the Donald from free speech--speech in which he claimed he'd won in a landslide in 2020, as he is fond of saying. 

The sides are well-established and fortified. You either buy the goods Jack Smith is selling, or you buy the truths Fox markets. Either way, in juxtaposing those two notions of the truth, it's impossible not to see that the U. S. of A. is abysmally divided--and that's immensely dangerous right now.

And he's done it--Trump has. Americans on both sides of the political divide find it difficult to believe that what happened yesterday was as momentous as anything in this nation's history--a President of these United States has been accused of attempting to erase the votes of the vast majority who oppose him (seven million votes separated the two of them in popular count). A President of the United States was accused of trying to alter the truth in order to stay in power. 

That's what happened yesterday. 

One of the most rightly famous Donald J. Trump lines was uttered right here in northwest Iowa, at the college where I graduated, where I taught for almost 40 years, Dordt University, in Sioux Center. No one has forgotten the line. It went like this: "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters." 

And then he said, "It's incredible." I can't help thinking that Trump himself was shocked at the loyalty his candidacy had almost mystically created. He was himself surprised, stupefied. Understanding the Trump phenom is complex and mysterious, and Trump's own way of holding on to the immense power he still has is by flattening everything into an either/or position. You're either for him or you're a commie or fascist--you're someone who hates America. Make it easy, he thinks, and then say it a thousand times because eventually people will believe it, including 80% of my neighbors.

The Dordt appearance was January of 2017, six years ago, when he was running for the nomination of the Republican Party. Nothing's changed. At this moment, only one legitimate contender is registering enough popular appeal to challenge Trump for the Republican nomination, and that man, Florida's Gov De Santos, is sinking in lead boots he put on his own feet. Yet, even though DeSantos has no problem determining who is his opposition, he's scared stiff of saying anything negative because Donald J. Trump could stand in the BJ Haan chapel and shoot somebody and not lose any voters.

Yesterday was for the history books, but most people, I can't help but think, simply scratch it up to politics. It wasn't "just politics." No single phenomenon could be as injurious to the nation and its culture than a slapdash shrug of the shoulders to yesterday's Trump indictments. Yet, that's how we all--me too!--react. So far has he hardened us to his treachery and falsehoods. We've become accustomed to it, but nothing else in our nation's history comes near to flattening America's own moral compass.

They're serious, and he's serious. Yesterday was huge. Huge. So much of what we are is at stake here. 

"The Sioux Center Affair" (v)

It's hard to imagine many "Happy New Years" in town a few days after the Christmas Sunday School program shocker. The Teachers Meeting had pushed the entire conflict out into the pews, and no one was more put upon than the Consistory, whose authority, as they saw it, had been mauled.

Just a few days and meetings later, the Consistory returned the favor:

The Consistory declares that what you announced at the Christmas program, through the secretary, gave a biased representation of the Consistory's handling and then proceeded to follow this with a protest. Since this was done in a public meeting, the Consistory declares that you have done wrong, and expects you to agree that this be admitted publicly by you from the pulpit. 

I'm not sure my children (who are no longer children) would recognize what the Consistory is saying. The price they're demanding of the Teachers is based upon the public nature of the uprising. What they'd done, the Consistory claimed, was public sin, a violation of the ninth commandment, "bearing false witness."

I'm old enough to remember a young woman, obviously pregnant, standing in front of the church for what the church called "discipline." Oddly enough, years later, the man who'd married the young lady (he was not a member) stood behind the counter of a Phoenix convenience store. I recognized him immediately, in part, I'm sure, because of the ritual discipline his girlfriend had undergone, standing alone at the front of the church. Her husband, years later, didn't remember me--I had been just a boy--but he told me he remembered my parents.

What the Consistory was demanding of the Teachers was that a representative follow that churchly course. By demanding public confession, the consistory was pulling a hefty weapon from their discipline arsenal. Only excommunication would have been heavier. They were demanding a ritual of public confession from their own members, some of whom had to have been of significant standing. In addition, the Teachers were adamant about their not being guilty of anything--and had Prof. Louis Berkhov to back up their claims. "Supervision of the Sunday School is most important," Berkhov wrote in a letter the Teachers. "Sunday School teachers would do well to present nominations to a sub-committee of the consistory for approval before announcing them," which is what the Teachers maintained they'd done. 

In February, a meeting was held which went nowhere, although the Teachers did claim they were willing to do some rewriting of their propoosed constitution. The Consistory, however, continued to insist on public confession. Rev. De Leeuw suggested that, in light of the Teachers' concession, the consistory take some step of their own toward reconciliation. In a moment, one of their members moved for adjournment, a vote was taken, and the consistory left the room. 

(Prof. Van Dyke's history of what had become something of a brawl admits in an aside that right there the notes of the Teachers Meetings end--there is no record of what happened, no documentation of what the Teachers did during next five months.) 

In March, the consistory appealed to Classis Sioux Center, but the classis meeting was, for them disappointing. Classis scolded both warring parties but did not--or at least did not to the consistory's satisfaction--clearly define the nature of the relationship between the two groups. 

At the congregational meeting in May, no one was happy. The congregation voted on new members of the consistory, but the list of candidates was a mess. People cast blank ballots, made nominations from the floor, and Van Dyke says, 36 votes were cast for men who hadn't been nominated. The Consistory grew angrier with Rev. De Leeuw; they felt the pastor had allowed things to get way out of control. 

In early summer, the Consistory asked for help from consistories at Hull and Rock Valley, a joint meeting arranged in August with the specific objective of evaluating Rev. DeLeeuw. That meeting, something spoken of as "the double consistory," must have set some kind of post-Synod of Dort record; it went on and on and on for 29 hours and featured unending shenanigans, some of which occured outside the sanctuary, where a large crowd gathered, a group the Consistory claimed was a mob. A few members of the consistory "risked physical danger," Van Dyke says, to quell the gang outside, and by the next morning the whole event became "the talk of the town."

This "double consistory" tried hard to bring about some accord by suggesting that both sides reconsider their stances and work hard at unification. Specifically, the guest consistories recommended that the slate of candidates for the Consistory create a list of nominations compiled from suggestions of the entire congregation, following Article 22 of Church Order which stipulates that churches give its members opportunity to nominate officers. 

The Consistory heeded the advice of their neighboring consistories, but determinedly refused to allow many nominations from those they considered the rebels. Thirty-three nominations for elder were forwarded, fifty for deacon. Using its own battle-worn criteria, the Consistory presented their slate of nominations, a list that included only two candidates from the opposition. Various reasons were given, Van Dyke says: "One of them was determined to be too old, another had not been in the congregation long enough, another slept during the service, still another always came late to church, another had acted immorally on the ship when emigrating."

Because the fellowship of Sioux Center CRC was in no condition to choose its ruling body, those presently serving in the Consistory simply called off the annual congregational meeting. 

That's when the talk began: perhaps Sioux Center would need two Christian Reformed congregations. In fact, two had, clearly enough, already formed. 

"The Sioux Center Affair" (iv)

Be assured, the consistory of the Christian Reformed Church of Sioux Center, Iowa, felt little "peace on earth" on Christmas of 1919. The consistory's skirmishing with the upstart Teachers Meeting had become almost a daily thing, producing conflicts that had no visible exits. The consistory had laid down the law; the Teachers Meeting had thumbed their noses, behavior that belittled the authoritative council of congregational life. It looked and felt like plain old insurrection.

Meanwhile, as if they weren't sufficiently oppressed by the teachers, the consistory was visited by two men with heads full of steam, two men whose cause was two-fold. They demanded the language used in Sunday worship be changed from Dutch to English, and, furthermore, that an additional name be added to the list of consistorial candidates for election, Watse Bierma, whose position on the Teachers Meeting battles was well-known: Bierma sympathized with the rebels.

Essentially, the consistory tabled both demands with reference to the calendar--it was a day before the congregational meeting. They couldn't be expected to engineer drastic changes in the practices of the church on such short notice. 

But their appearance before the consistory didn't bode well. Van Dyke says, "An attempt to place [Bierma's] name in nomination made it appear as if there were an organized effort on the part of some members of the congregation to challenge the consistory's decision-making authority," which, of course, there was. Temperatures around that table continued to rise.

Still, it was the consistory's ruling that did all the emotion-stirring in the Teachers Meeting: if the teachers would not abide by the terms of the Sunday School's original constitution, there'd be no more Sunday School. Period. End of discussion. 

On December 25, 1919, the congregation, some happily, some not--went off to church for the Sunday School Christmas program, hoping to sing carols, watch their darling kids, and enjoy the blessings of the season of good will towards men.

But the Teachers Meeting was in no mood for reconciliation. When the program ended, they moved front and center to declare, first of all, the happy successes of the congregation's Sunday School program (200 kids attending Sunday School in English, forty more in Dutch), and then announce that a shortfall in teachers had triggered a conflict with the consistory concerning how exactly to fill those positions the success of the program had created and required.  

Up there before the entire congregation, the Teachers explained their position, even citing the Acts of Synod, including the specific provisions for consistorial rule. They did not mention the matter of how Sunday School teachers be chosen, but declared right there that afternoon in church that the conflict had come to a conclusion by way the consistory's determination that there would be no more Sunday School at Sioux Center CRC.

Imagine that--just after the Sunday School program, the teachers announce the death of Sunday School.

Every last moment of their presentation must have served to raise the consistory's ire. No one had seen it coming. They were gob-smacked, AND blamed entirely for bolting the doors on Sunday School. At Christmas in Sioux Center CRC there was no peace on earth. Van Dyke says the consistory considered the actions the Teachers had taken on Christmas "a declaration of war." 

In the context of ordinary church life, a breakdown such as the one that Sioux Center CRC was suffering through could not be seen only as a personality conflict. These were God's people, doing God's work, in God's world in God's church. When the consistory met again after Christmas, they found it difficult not to think of what had happened as full-blown rebellion--and that their own undershepard, Rev. De Leeuw, as part of the rebel front and to see all of that high drama in biblical terms. Sin. There had to be sin. Only sin could have so shrouded the Teachers' sense of righteousness, and sin, public sin, had to be confessed. Thus, the consistory accused the Teachers Meeting of violation of the 9th commandment. They had, surely, bore false witness before the congregation. All had seen and heard. Confession of sin, public confession of sin was essential. 

Still, when, a few days later, a petition was sent to the consistory, signed by several members of the congregation, members of standing within the congregation, the consistory simply told itself that there now was full-fledged opposition.

The Sunday School responded in like-mind:

We thus regard the demands of the Consistory as an interference with the rights of the teachers and the terminating of the Sunday School as an unlawful deed below the dignity of the Consistory which is appointed over the congregation as a serving and not a ruling power.

Christmas 1919 was memorable but by no means beloved. 

Sunday Morning Meds--from Psalm 42*

 “Why are you downcast, O my soul? 

Why so disturbed within me? 

Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him,

 my Savior and my God.”

 

The morning is dark; the day will be cold.  Northwest winds will make any foray outside something of a chore.  But we’ve had a beautiful fall, and no one is complaining.  Winter is coming.  Squirrels scramble across our lawn and up our trees in anticipation, but they’re fat like hedgehogs. 

 It’s Thanksgiving Day, and, upstairs, the kitchen is full of empty bowls and pans and all kinds of food ready to be ladled, poured, mashed, and baked.  In the fridge, the naked turkey sits, a fourteen-pounder, queen for a day.  That may be overstatement, and it certainly is if you’re the turkey.

 Years ago already, after reading an interview with Garrison Keillor, I began to take some time each day to give thanks for something—that my Dell works, for my glasses, for Walden, for the cat across the room, snoring right now. I started a daily-thanks business, betting on Keillor’s idea that we could be better folks if we started our days with gratitude to God, who doesn’t need our thanks as much as we need to give it.

 Still do occasionally, years later. If you follow this blog, you know what I’m talking about. I’m not as disciplined as I once was, but I still try to get some in once in a while.

 So here’s the lay of the land this Thanksgiving.  My son-in-law has a new job, my daughter is happy, and the two of them love each other and their kids. Our parents, all three of them, despite their age, are doing well, as well as can be expected. Lots of darkness is behind our son; he’s married now and delightfully happy. And did I mention those grandchildren?—they show up here and I giggle.  My wife and I love each other, and take our coffee every morning in the great room of our new house.

 Here’s what I’m thinking this Thanksgiving morning:  I’m thankful that there’s always something, always hope, always the dawn.

 And I’m thankful that I’m David, in a way, because I know as he does that no matter how dark the day or cold the winter, no matter how impossible life might look, there’s always hope, there’s God the rock.  He’s reason alone for Thanksgiving.

 Psalm 42 is a major psalm, maybe the most famous song of lament in the whole collection.  What’s here is brokenness and despair, and I’m thankful for whoever penned this poem because he’s written our story too, for all of us. 

 All that wailing doesn’t appear on anyone’s Christmas list, but at one time or another in all of our lives it hides somewhere behind the tree, ready to spring. And then does. I can’t imagine any believer who doesn’t feel the despair of Psalm 42 at some point or another in life—“why so disturbed within me?”

 But even in his despair, the poet who blessed us with Psalm 42 is a pit bull:  “I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.”

 I’m thankful for that double-fisted determination, thankful that my faith, while maybe not a pit bull is at least a mutt with attitude. I don’t know why, but God has blessed me with a light in the darkness that is very capable of growing dim, but for some mysterious reason, undouse-able. 

 It’s the gift of faith, a gift of love, for which I am—this Thanksgiving morning especially—deeply thankful.  

 Psalm 42 is a song of triumph, even in our deepest anguish.  Psalm 42 is a song about faith. 

__________________________    

  *Today is not Thanksgiving, and this meditation wasn't penned yesterday. But I'll stand by what I said--except for this: our parents are still doing well, but they are, all three of them, gone. It's not a Dell I'm working on, but a Lenova--big deal. The picture is from out back, just yesterday. That having been said, I'm just as thankful as I was when I wrote this little morning meditation--and there are two more grandchildren!