Easter
The other day, Sunday April 5th, 2015, was Easter.
Came and went. It seemed insignificant, at least not what it was when I was a child.
In fact, I didn’t realize last Friday was “Good Friday” until that night when the TV-news said the stock-markets were closed.
Mail was in my mailbox, I worked-out at the YMCA; it seemed like a typical Friday — not the “Good Friday” I remembered.
Although I thought later perhaps “Good Friday” was more important back then because I was going to church at that time.
It was an evangelical church, heavily into celebration of days like Easter.
Things seemed different 50-60 years ago.
Like “Good Friday” was a holiday that cancelled mail-delivery.
That’s not how it is now.
Jesus has been skonked by Columbus — even Rev. King.
My parents were hyper-religious. Our church was founded by my father and other zealots in our neighborhood.
They got an old rural chapel-building and refurbished it.
But as our suburb grew after WWII, the building was quickly outgrown.
In 1952 our church was moved to a new location for complete rebuilding and expansion.
It was jacked up on cribbing so a basement could be built underneath, and the sanctuary was doubled in length.
The original building is still being used.
Look hard and you can see it.
The roof of the old building — toward the rear — is rippled. The new construction is straight.
It looked like the old building as refurbished. In fact, it still had a small addition off to the side.
Later Mrs. Walton, our next-door neighbor and Sunday-School Superintendent, one of the zealots, managed to get the church to build a giant two-story Sunday-School annex.
It didn’t match the church.
It was brick instead of wood, and looked like a school; its roof was flat.
Mrs. Walton also convinced me as a pants-wearer no female would ever have anything to do with me. She also told me I was “of-the-Devil” because I dressed up as Elvis Presley for Halloween.
Our church always made a big thing of Christmas and Easter. Flowers and decorations galore.
It was also the time we saw the Christmas and Easter attendees, the people who only attended church Christmas and Easter.
Like Charley Post and his father. Posty was otherwise evil, but by attending Christmas and Easter he could be saintly.
Eventually the first pastor of our church moved on, and my father got mad at his replacement.
The new pastor had been hired over my father’s objection. My father was one of the founding deacons, and was kicked off the Board of Deacons after making a scene.
The last straw was when the new pastor discontinued the poorly-attended evening services.
My father started driving my sister and I about 10 miles to another Baptist church that still held evening services.
I loathed it. I didn’t know anyone, and was expected to socialize.
That didn’t last long; our family moved to northern DE when my father got a new job.
And that was the end of that.
My father did an immense amount of research to find us a church that met his standards. How much financial support was rendered to foreign missionaries seemed key.
My father wanted to be a missionary himself, but was turned down.
So both our churches, my first as a youngster, and my second as a teen, were heavily into celebration of Christmas and Easter.
So I wonder if my perception of the decline of Easter is a reflection of my past.
That is, maybe it was similarly insignificant when I was a child, although as a church attendee it seemed significant.
But as I recall, “Good Friday” was also a holiday back then, without mail delivery.
The almighty dollar triumphed. Sunday store-closing is a thing of the past. When I was a child stores closed Sunday.
And Easter isn’t the frenzied spending spree Christmas is, so Easter no longer counts — or never did.
• “Erlton” (‘EARL-tin’) is the small suburb of Philadelphia in south Jersey where I lived until I was 13. Erlton was founded in the ‘30s, named after its developer, whose name was Earl. Erlton was north of Haddonfield (“ha-din-feeld”), an old Revolutionary town.
Came and went. It seemed insignificant, at least not what it was when I was a child.
In fact, I didn’t realize last Friday was “Good Friday” until that night when the TV-news said the stock-markets were closed.
Mail was in my mailbox, I worked-out at the YMCA; it seemed like a typical Friday — not the “Good Friday” I remembered.
Although I thought later perhaps “Good Friday” was more important back then because I was going to church at that time.
It was an evangelical church, heavily into celebration of days like Easter.
Things seemed different 50-60 years ago.
Like “Good Friday” was a holiday that cancelled mail-delivery.
That’s not how it is now.
Jesus has been skonked by Columbus — even Rev. King.
My parents were hyper-religious. Our church was founded by my father and other zealots in our neighborhood.
They got an old rural chapel-building and refurbished it.
But as our suburb grew after WWII, the building was quickly outgrown.
In 1952 our church was moved to a new location for complete rebuilding and expansion.
It was jacked up on cribbing so a basement could be built underneath, and the sanctuary was doubled in length.
 |
| Erlton Community Baptist Church. (The Sunday-School annex is on the other side.) (Photo by BobbaLew.) |
Look hard and you can see it.
The roof of the old building — toward the rear — is rippled. The new construction is straight.
It looked like the old building as refurbished. In fact, it still had a small addition off to the side.
Later Mrs. Walton, our next-door neighbor and Sunday-School Superintendent, one of the zealots, managed to get the church to build a giant two-story Sunday-School annex.
It didn’t match the church.
It was brick instead of wood, and looked like a school; its roof was flat.
Mrs. Walton also convinced me as a pants-wearer no female would ever have anything to do with me. She also told me I was “of-the-Devil” because I dressed up as Elvis Presley for Halloween.
Our church always made a big thing of Christmas and Easter. Flowers and decorations galore.
It was also the time we saw the Christmas and Easter attendees, the people who only attended church Christmas and Easter.
Like Charley Post and his father. Posty was otherwise evil, but by attending Christmas and Easter he could be saintly.
Eventually the first pastor of our church moved on, and my father got mad at his replacement.
The new pastor had been hired over my father’s objection. My father was one of the founding deacons, and was kicked off the Board of Deacons after making a scene.
The last straw was when the new pastor discontinued the poorly-attended evening services.
My father started driving my sister and I about 10 miles to another Baptist church that still held evening services.
I loathed it. I didn’t know anyone, and was expected to socialize.
That didn’t last long; our family moved to northern DE when my father got a new job.
And that was the end of that.
My father did an immense amount of research to find us a church that met his standards. How much financial support was rendered to foreign missionaries seemed key.
My father wanted to be a missionary himself, but was turned down.
So both our churches, my first as a youngster, and my second as a teen, were heavily into celebration of Christmas and Easter.
So I wonder if my perception of the decline of Easter is a reflection of my past.
That is, maybe it was similarly insignificant when I was a child, although as a church attendee it seemed significant.
But as I recall, “Good Friday” was also a holiday back then, without mail delivery.
The almighty dollar triumphed. Sunday store-closing is a thing of the past. When I was a child stores closed Sunday.
And Easter isn’t the frenzied spending spree Christmas is, so Easter no longer counts — or never did.
• “Erlton” (‘EARL-tin’) is the small suburb of Philadelphia in south Jersey where I lived until I was 13. Erlton was founded in the ‘30s, named after its developer, whose name was Earl. Erlton was north of Haddonfield (“ha-din-feeld”), an old Revolutionary town.
posted by BobbaLew at 12:25 PM
5 Comments:
For an alternative assessment of Erlton Community Baptist Church in Cherry Hill, New Jersey:
http://baylyblog.com/blog/2013/01/reflections-my-baptist-upbringing
Dear BobbaLew,
Is your name Bobby Hughes? My older brother Jim believes so. Anyway, he thinks your history may be a bit fuzzy. If John Peterson was the called pastor that prompted your father to leave the church, that happened in 1956. The Sunday evening service, a critical element of old-school Protestant practice, wasn't dropped until the late 1970s at Erlton. I was too young to know you or your family, but I would argue that, in general, the dropping of evening worship signals church decline, which was the case with Erlton by the late 1970s. (Indeed, the evening rite may be more important in the long haul than special services for Easter or Christmas.) But Erlton's hey-day as a church were under the pastorates of Peterson and Ralph Kievet, who succeeded him.
And for commentary on the changing character of Sunday's in American society, see my Philly Inquirer piece on Ocean City, New Jersey:
http://articles.philly.com/2012-04-15/news/31345442_1_boardwalk-shops-byob-repeal
I don’t remember EXACTLY what happened, but the impression I was given was my father began taking us to Palmer’s Haddon Heights Baptist because ECBC had given up on Sunday-Evening services — but it may have been because founding pastor Bill Childs was replaced by John Peterson over his objection.
My father had a way of altering things to suit his purposes.
Ralph Kievet is after my time; our family moved to northern DE in 1957.
I have a few other photographs from ECBC; gimme an e-mail.
Would love to see any of your photos! Please send to rwpatterson79@verizon.net. Thank you.
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