|
ABOUT 10
a.m. on July 15, 1989, Kenny Weinberg was grumbling aloud why a good
Jewish boy like himself was driving his father-in-law’s truck pulling a
gigantic float of the Deering Community Church into place for the annual
Hillsborough parade. Sitting atop the replica of their church, Dorothy
and Wallace Wood, Thelma and Tom Copadis, Jeanne and Bud Bartlett, Hazel
Vogelien and Don Johnson, all dressed in period costumes, represented
the different eras of the Church’s two-hundred-year history.
The Deering Community Church’s float won first prize that
day as Brad Abernathey, a founding member of the Deering Lake’s summer
colony, was delivering the sermon, “New Arks for Old Covenants.” These
and other events such as Jane Spragg’s oral history play, “This is the
Church and These are the People,” a program of early American music and
the burial of the Church time capsule punctuated that glorious summer
when our church celebrated its bicentennial. The celebration reached its
climax when, to a standing-room-only congregation, Rev. Keach preached
his stirring message based on John Wise’s sermon centuries earlier, “The Heart and the Head.”
On Christmas Eve of that same year the candle-lit
church resounded with song and prayer as the congregation transported
themselves back two centuries to Thomas Merrill’s two-story colonial
house just down the road from our present building. In 1789, nine
Deering residents gathered to create the Deering Congregational Church.
Merrill was known as an orthodox Calvinist and his son Daniel was the
first local man to be ordained a gospel minister. The other eight men
had journeyed on horseback from all parts of town for this historic
meeting.
Parker Morse had traveled a short distance from the
Valley View area, while John Shearer had set out from the farm where Tom
Copadis now lives and ridden over five miles across snow-covered Tubbs
Hill and Greg Road. Ninian Aiken, William Aiken and William Forsaith had
had only about two miles to travel. The Aikens set out from the present-day His Mansion complex
and Forsaith from Jane Spragg’s former home near County Road.
William McFarson journeyed a little over two miles from the
present Dutton Farm, and William Waugh and Robert Wilson arrived from
the southern section of town, the area where “the leading men” of
Deering lived.
Two visiting ministers, Reverend Moore from New Boston
and the beloved Rev. Barnes, of Hillsborough, had come the furthest. Rev.
Moore served as the moderator for that founding meeting, while the more
liberal Rev. Barnes played a supporting role. By the end of that cold
evening, the nine founders of our church had composed the church
covenant, the document that still governs our membership.
Toward the end
of that document, we read: “To walk in love towards others, endeavoring
ye mutually edification in visiting, exhorting, & comforting, as
occasion serves….,” words that have remarkable resonance in our own day.
The Deering Church set out on an orthodox Calvinist path, but the
swirling winds of reform threatened to move the membership toward a more liberal theology.
By the time of
the church’s founding, the Great Awakening had come to New Hampshire and
religious leaders like Hosea Ballou were preaching about a generous God
who could offer salvation to everyone no matter what race or class.
Baptists, Methodists and Universalists were winning converts throughout
New England and the old-line Calvinist beliefs, especially its
salvation-scarce doctrine of the “Chosen few,” were under attack.
|
During
its first four decades the Congregational Church was Deering’s official
Church and services were held in the meetinghouse, our present Town
Hall.
In these years prior to the NH separation of Church and State in
1819, each town was expected to raise taxes to settle a minister and
from the first, the debate between mainstream Calvinism and Reformers caused
contentious debate at most town meetings. Deering was no
exception. By 1801 out of New Hampshire’s 188 churches, fifty had voted
to dissent from mainstream Calvinism.
Deering
was unable to call a settled minister until the Town Meeting voted to
invite Rev. William Sleigh as pastor in 1801. He was popular with the
general voters, but the Church fathers were not happy with Sleigh’s
selection. In the ensuring years the argument over Sleigh’s credentials
and theological outlook split the town into bitter camps. After the
area ministers questioned Sleigh’s education and failure in his
ordination examination, the Deering church leaders refused to ordain
him. As a result, Sleigh left, taking most of the membership with him,
and he started a new church. When Sleigh left Deering in 1808, to try
his hand as an entrepreneur in the newly arriving industrial revolution,
the town was badly divided.
Struggle to survive
The
Congregational Church struggled to survive, even inviting Rev. Richards,
one of America’s first trained missionaries, to come to Deering “to heal
a divided town.” After serving in Deering from 1814 to 1816, Rev.
Richards carried the “Good News” to Sri Lanka. When he fell ill there,
he was treated by Dr. John Scudder, one of Cy Sherman’s illustrious
ancestors. The Scudders were the first American medical missionaries and
their work still goes on at the hospital in Vellore, one of the best
such facilities in India.
In 1825
another “Awakening” spread through New Hampshire and Deering was able to
settle ministers and build the church building where we now worship. The
membership called Eber Child, a Calvinist with Evangelical leanings, and
he plunged into the Awakening network, preaching in nearby towns and
attracting new converts. The membership paid their new minister $300.00
per year and launched a pledge program to raise funds to construct a new
church.
To plan
and finance the new church building, the membership incorporated as a
Congregational Society, wrote bylaws and elected a moderator and clerk.
By 1828 the new church was able to vote a voluntary system of taxation
which later became the practice of pledging. For the first year the
assessments ranged from $8.14 paid by Russell Tubbs, owner of the
general store beside the Huggard’s house, to $3.73, paid by the
venerable Thomas Merrill. Twenty-five other members joined in the effort
to raise $82.06, the first of many Church budgets. In 1829, the
membership voted to build their new church, leaving the old meetinghouse
to the growing number of Free Will Baptists, Universalists and
Methodists, who combined to form the Free Salvation Society of Deering.
The Congregational Society sold eighty shares at $25.00 per share and
hired Reuben Loveren as architect and builder. Ironically, Reuben and
his brothers were also engaged to build the East Deering Church where
the Free Salvation Society established Deering’s second church. The
Loverens were original settlers in Deering and built both the complex
where our present pastor lives and the white colonial house just up the
road.
Besides selling shares, the Congregational Society also auctioned off
family pews. The families and the amounts they paid are listed on small
plaques on the pew doors. The Sunday school students made these plaques in the 1960s. |
Wallace and
Dorothy Wood usually sit in the John Grimes pew and Gordon and Cy
Sherman in Thomas Merrill’s. For over seventy years the Johnson/Vogelien
family has been sitting in the Russell Tubs pew. Other members who
worship on Sundays may pause to read the names on each pew and reflect
on how these families lived and what they were thinking when they sat
where we now sit some 175 years later.
Membership Call
Peter Holt
From the
Child ministry until the Civil War, the church prospered and played a
significant part in Deering affairs. Following Child’s departure, the
membership called Peter Holt, a Harvard graduate, who served from
1835-1843.
Under Rev. Holt the church enthusiastically embraced the
Temperance Movement and other features of mid-19th century
Protestant piety that sought to regulate personal morality. In the
1830s some 200 townsfolk joined the Temperance League.
Central
to Protestant Piety was the universal possibility of salvation for
anyone who accepted the “Good News.” If one freely pledged to live a
pious life and chose the path of light over darkness and to follow God’s
will as revealed through Jesus Christ, the new believer could gain
eternal life in heaven.
Central to this theology was Christ’s sacrifice
to remove our sins. A common hymn sung by Deering Sunday School students
in 1857 rang out: “I lay my sins on Jesus, The Spotless Lamb of God; He
bears them all, and frees us, From the accursed load.”
The
nineteenth-century morality of the Deering Church was particularly harsh
on adultery. Our church records list several incidents where women
seeking to join the church were examined and asked to repent their
breaking of the seventh commandment. For example, on September 26,
1823, Anna Carr faced the congregation and publicly admitted to her sin
of adultery. She explained:
..with a broken heart and contrite [sense] that I now
take blame and shame to myself, and confess my transgression. I have
sinned against God. I have by my conduct as it respects the seventh
commandment grossly broken over covenant obligations. I am sorry for my
sin and repent.
Expanded
education was another religious reform of the era. Protestantism began
with the belief that the Bible rather than the Church was the true
vehicle of God’s will, and literacy became a crucial skill for everyone
who sought to know Divine revelation. To facilitate understanding the
Bible, Congregational ministers were graduates of the best universities
and they were usually the most educated citizens in their communities.
Protestantism in this country brought with it free public education that
was infused with religious socialization. Public school children often
used Biblical materials to learn to read.
Students in Deering chanted
their alphabet beginning: “In Adam’s fall, we sinned,” and ending with
“Zacchaeus he, Did climb a tree, His Lord to see.” In the 1840s the
Church Sunday School supported a library of nearly three hundred volumes
and the youngsters read them religiously and took them home to study.
From 1863 to 1874 Morris Holman served in Deering as pastor and,
until Stanley Keach in 1981, held the record for the longest service as
a Deering minister. Holman accepted the call when our church was viable
and a vital force in the community. When he left, the Church was
entering a period of sharp decline. The regular attendance of about 50
during the Holt years had plummeted to less than a dozen by Holman’s
departure. |
