Thursday, May 23, 2024

It is the 23rd of May 2024. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

There are some historians, who, if asked to talk about the heyday of the American West can get downright romantic. Manifest destiny, gold rushes, frontier justice, etc… etc… I will admit my own inclinations lead me to think more about the darker side of the American West- true outlaws and displaced peoples and a kind of rough justice only romanticized by the old western films.

But, get me going on the topic of trains and the 19th-century American rail experiment, and I can get as geeked out as any. Seriously, the increase in speed means the spread of people and things and ideas at a pace previously unknown. The entire landscape needs to bend to the will of the new public desire to get to places and to get things fast. And what about our concept of “time”? No longer does “sunrise” or “midday” work if you have to catch a train. Specific time, timepieces, individual tickets, and what to do about the time spent on the train? Enter the growth of newspapers and paperback novels. But I digress….

What about the church? How cold the church use this new technology to spread the Gospel? The church’s view of the new West was not at all romantic or idealistic. Small spread out towns lacked the civilizing forces of law and religion. Saloons outnumbered churches.

It was the bishop William David Walker- an Episcopalian in North Dakota who thought what he saw in Siberia might work in the West. He noticed that while traveling across the great Russian expanse, an extra car was added to the train on Sundays. In it, there would be a Greek Orthodox mass, and it would repeat the mass when it came into each new town. Back home, he contacted the missions board about the idea, and one of its members, Cornelius Vanderbilt II, gave the first donation to the Pullman Palace Car Company to build the 60-foot-long Church of the Advent or the Cathedral Car of North Dakota. While this was a first of its kind in America, it didn’t have the success hoped for, staying in North Dakota and providing little service compared to the cost.

Enter the so-called “Chapel Car Syndicate,” an invention of the American Baptist Publication Society, a very loose affiliation of church men and philanthropists headed by John D. Rockefeller and E.J. Barney of the Barney and Smith Car Company (second only to Pullman). They would build a truly impressive car with living apartments, a desk and bookshelves, a kitchen, a brass lectern, and hardwood pews that could sit 2 to 3. There was storage for bibles and religious texts to give out, as well as a pump organ (later trains would have Thomas Edison’s phonograph, which he donated himself). This first “chapel car” was dedicated as The Evangel at the Cincinnati meeting of the American Baptist Publication Society on the 23rd of May in 1891.

This car and model would lead to others. They became a curiosity among the western towns, and they would offer services, Sunday schools, food and shelter for some, and the rebirth of an old vocation, that of the colporteur. A colporteur was a peddler of books and tracts- usually Bibles and theological tracts. They had traveled across the European countryside during and after the Reformation-  on foot or horse, it was a taxing job, but the railroad colporteur in the Wild West brought the task a certain lure.

The Chapel Car ministry, as seen in the Evangel and her trips around the American West benefited from the moneyed interests behind the railways- needing good press and government help they offered to allow all religious railway cars free passage on the rails- a boon for these missionaries otherwise the ministry would have been too expensive.  

During World War I when the government temporarily nationalized the railroads it cut chapel car service and when the railroads were handed back to the private companies in 1920 they no longer saw the positive PR of free tracks for chapel cars. That and other missionary societies argued against spending money on this expensive spectacle when the money could go further with more traditional methods.

In November of 1924 the Evangel made its last trip out to Rawlins, Wyoming. It was taken off the tracks and its wheels and put onto concrete. Today it serves as part of the larger “Chapel Car Bible Church”. Today we remember the dedication of that Chapel Car- the Evangel on this day in 1891 and the curious, short lived but important Chapel Car ministry at the turn into the 20th century.

 The last word for today is from the daily lectionary and a very good word from Romans 8: 

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2 because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. 3 For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 23rd of May 2024, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who wonders if the parents of Cole Porter - born this same year of 1891 could have known the confusion they may have caused… he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by reminding you Cole Porter not only wrote Kiss Me Kate, but also I get a Kick out of You, Night and Day, and I’ve Got You Under My Skin- I’m  Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.