"The Sioux Center Affair" (iii)

Stained glass window donated by Willa Cather to her Episcopalian Church in Red Cloud, NE

[Today's post was meant to be yesterday's, but our wi-fi went out and stayed out until late morning.]

Professor Van Dyke's story of the battle records few names, but one he does mention arrives at an inopportune moment, just as the sides were getting into trenches for what would turn out to be an epic battle. He is identified here--as elsewhere--as C. DeLeeuw (capitalization and spacing differs), but was more respectfully known as the Reverend Cornelius De Leeuw, whose term of service at the new church was in all likelihood cut short by the mess within the church. 

It seems that C. DeLeeuw quite quickly determined to side with the "Teachers Meeting," both in terms of prerogatives for language usage as well as the immediate cause of the furor, the answer to the question, "Who's in charge here?"

From a century's distance, it seems impossible that such a wild fire could ignite from a list of new Sunday School teachers. Sides must have begun to form earlier, but Van Dyke notes that what lit up the church--barely 30 years old--was a list of teachers submitted to the consistory by the Teachers Meeting in February of 1919, a list which included five names not on the consistory's original list. The Teachers argued that they were adding names only because there weren't enough names on the consistory's list; the operation of the Sioux Center's CRC Sunday School required more teachers.

The greater problem, it seems--the shocker behind that short list of names--was the arrogation of power the consistory read into the Teachers Meeting actually telling the consistory who was going to be teaching the next year. Van Dyke claims that the approach taken by the Teachers Meeting wasn't new; rather, he says, Synod's 1918 warning about the danger of the Sunday School had sharpened the consistory's fears about the whole program. The consistory was wounded and wary.

That's when the new pastor arrived from Pella, where he'd been for ten years. Little is known about the Preacher DeLeeuw today, except the list of churches he served in his close-to 50-years in CRC pulpits. Both his previous charge--at Pella--and his succeeding charge--at Lansing, Illinois--were seemingly successful. Post the trials at Sioux Center, he was at Lansing for 20 years. 

Van Dyke does more than suggest that Rev. De Leeuw fell in with the Teachers and was more progressive than the consistory with respect to the way in which the congregation operated. "It soon became apparent," Van Dyke writes, "that De Leeuw differed with the consistory over the nature of consistorial power." Given the nature of young, immigrant churches in that era, consistorial power was not something with which to trifle, even--and perhaps especially--when the trifle-er is the pastor. 

Meanwhile, the Teachers Meeting did more than roll their eyes at the consistory's response to their newly abridged list. They determined the only way to fight was to revise their constitution, to redraw the lines of political power. So that summer they did just that, in a fashion they had to know would only raise the temperature of the conflict. There were other points of difference, but the one most specific to the matter of who chooses teachers found reference here:

The Sunday School is under supervision of  the Consistory. They will acquaint themselves with the teachers that give instruction, with their teachings and also with the papers that are used in connection therewith. 

Professor Van Dyke italicizes "acquaint," pointing at their direct takeover of power, at least as seen by the consistory, then goes on: "If the consistory had previously suspected that its authority was being systematically undermined, the proposed constitution removed all doubt." 

That's when, right there in church, the fecal matter hit the fan. 

The Consistory said no. In response, in November of 1919, the Teachers Meeting insisted they were right and that their new constitution diagrammed the way in which they sought to live. Furthermore, they quoted from the estimable Rev. Louis Berkhof, a highly esteemed seminary prof, whom they'd recruited to bolster their arguments. Letters that delineated each side of the argument flew back and forth between teachers and consistory until December, when the consistory, on an 8 to 1 vote, determined that unless the Teachers continued operations under the guidelines of the old constitution, after Christmas there would be no more Sunday School. It was that simple. 

As you might imagine, that ruling set up a most memorable Sunday School Christmas program.