|
In many respects, the stories of our
local church embody in miniature a history of the broad
religious movements that transformed Protestant faith across
America during the past two hundred years. We built our first
churches in Illinois while Andrew Jackson was president, and
as William Lloyd Garrison began printing copies of The
Liberator. The frontier of the early 1830's was bounded by the
prairie of Illinois, and those first settlers from the East
"moved to the Western edge as best they could by teams of
horses or oxen or occasionally by flatboats on the rivers and
canals."
By 1850, 46 Congregational and
69 Christian churches had been established throughout the
state. "What was to become the city of DeKalb was first recognized
as a village in1854"; its site along the railroad drew
pioneers from New England and New York. That same year, Rev. Hamilton
Norton, a member of the Northwest Missionary Society,
took charge of organizing the DeKalb Congregational Church.
Norton was one of a number of folk sent west by agencies in
Boston and New Haven to found anti-slavery churches in the
growing territories. For many years, these ministers' salaries
were paid by the Home Missionary Association, which had come into
being as a committee to defend captives of the Amistad.
The first meeting of DeKalb's
Congregationalists was held on December 2, 1854, "on a stormy
day and under somewhat discouraging circumstances." They began
with just eight members, representing four local families.
Ironically, even this small group reflected the ecumenical
scope that would one day typify the United Church of Christ.
Four of the first founders--all from the Flynn family--came
from Bethel, a town in Vermont planted along the White River,
where they had belonged to the Congregational Church. Two
others, the Hilands, came from Pennsylvania, near Lancaster,
and, in fact, had been German Reformed.
The church in DeKalb began with a
handful of people at an anxious time. After a single recorded
meeting, services were discontinued until spring, "having been
suspended for about three months on account of the prevalence
of the small pox in the place," though none of the original
group died of the disease. Several times during its first
thirty years, unlucky pastors and internal conflict nearly
split the congregation. By 1858, there were 43 members. These
included former Baptists from upstate New York, Presbyterians
from Pennsylvania, English Evangelicals from Ohio, and some
folk from a Reformed Dutch church in the Hudson River Valley.
These folk came together, in part, as fellow abolitionists.
Norten's successor was granted a leave of absence in order to
fight slave owners in "Bloody Kansas."
Before 1870, Congregationalists met in
a number of temporary halls before taking over a rundown
schoolhouse. There, the Rev. Atwood, a carpenter, built his
own pulpit. But another pastor, Rev. John Bennett, ousted
Atwood in 1873, and his brief tenure badly divided the
congregation. Bennett "had a habit of altering minutes of
church meetings to express his opinions of those who disagreed
with him," and he scolded several families during his sermons,
charging them "with gross prevarication in the church by
defaming his character."
By 1878, church membership remained
stagnant at 53. The Rev. J.D. McCord of Hinsdale began a
month-long series of revival meetings in DeKalb in January,
1884. Apparently, McCord inspired Congregationalists to begin
what must have appeared to be a foolhardy venture-to construct
a new stone church in the center of the town. Such a project
encouraged and intimidated, both. One member, Manley Barber,
fretted in a diary that year that "we are too small in
numbers, and many of the members are not well-to-do in the
world's goods."
Nevertheless, the plan went on. Though
they did not join the church, a pair of wealthy families --
headed by DeKalb's barbed wire millionaires, Joseph Glidden
and Isaac Elwood -- unexpectedly provided the funds to
complete the building. The new church was begun in October
1885, and completed in early 1888. Enthusiasm evidently
brought hope and new life. An 1888 directory lists 216
members, and this figure had swelled to 460 by 1938. Church
records document the growth of women's circles and reading
groups, and old photographs show us the children coming for
Sunday school. DeKalb's Congregational Church played a part in
the social movements of its time -- in campaigns meant to feed
the poor, root out the causes of war, and, naively, perhaps,
outlaw alcohol. A popular minister, the Rev. George H.
Wilson, left after a decade in 1909 to become secretary of the
State of Illinois Anti-Saloon League. For many years, our
church was an ardent supporter of Prohibition. And new
people kept coming.
Finally, the stone church became too
small, and, perhaps, parishioners eventually tired of having
the choir interrupted by the whistle of passing trains. Land
farther from the tracks was donated; plans for a new building
were accepted late in 1951, and the ground-breaking ceremony
took place on a Sunday morning, April 12, 1953. On July 4,
1954, the members walked the mile to the new building for the
first worship service in its new sanctuary, where we continue
to meet today.
The First
Congregational Church of DeKalb was founded by anti-slavery
settlers, who ratified a covenant that read, in part: "We
receive the Lord Jesus, our Redeemer and Sanctifier. We
freely, with fixed purpose of our heart, give all we have to
be the Lord's, promising to walk before him in holiness.
We receive all true Christians as our equals in Christ and his friends as
our friends irrespective of color or condition in life and
promise to watch over them in fidelity and tenderness."
That last phrase --"with fidelity
and tenderness" -- expresses how we hope to minister
to others in a community of faith. Ours is not a faith
restricted to shareholders, or Midwestern-Americans, or to
people who speak English. Our first impulse, says Luke, must
be to try to see all people as the people of God's favor, and
to do everything in our power to help them see and live that
reality in all the areas of their
lives. |
