Life as a Lutheran (11/4/99)

By Paulette Tobin

A few weeks ago V.J. wrote about growing up Catholic in Eureka. Lately I've been thinking a lot about growing up Lutheran, what with last Sunday being Reformation Sunday, the anniversary of the day in 1517 when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg inviting a debate about church practice and doctrine. Also, last night Emily spent a few hours with her new friend, Katrin, a student from Germany who is nearing the end of a three-week stay here in Grand Forks. Katrin said she doesn't know anyone her age in Germany who goes to church services. It would seem the faith of our fathers is at a very low ebb indeed.

Zion Lutheran Church was such a center of my world when I was growing up in Eureka. My parents had to do chores, then get cleaned up and drive 12 miles to Eureka and yet our family hardly ever missed Sunday services. We went to the 9 a.m. English service, which was followed by Sunday school at 10 a.m. In those days there was still an 11 o'clock service in German.

I was baptized by Pastor Baudler, who was Zion's pastor from 1954 to about 1968 and who passed away earlier this year. Pastor Baudler was a commanding presence, with his erect bearing and shock of sandy hair, and we kids were all in awe of him. A few years ago a friend of mine who had been confirmed by Baudler said of him: "He WAS Martin Luther to me." Baudler's sermons were often accompanied by loud exclamations and arm waving and he created a major sensation one year when he read, from the pulpit, the names of several church members who had been absent from holy communion for more than a year. I have many good memories of Pastor Baudler, but the best are the times when he led us kids in singing the rounds he seemed to love so much. He sang with such gusto and joy.

Pastor Baudler was beloved by many, but not universally loved. Those who didn't like him mostly kept quiet about it. His actions could seem judgemental at times. The late Ted Straub, a member of one of Zion's oldest and most respected families, wrote in his autobiography about the run-in he had with Baudler in 1962 when one of the Straub daughters was planning to be married at Zion. Two weeks before the wedding Baudler sent the chairman of the church council to the Straub to inform him that the wedding would not be permitted at Zion because the groom-to-be had been divorced. There is nothing in Lutheran doctrine that would have prevented a divorced person from marrying in the church. Nevertheless, Baudler forbade it and the church council backed him up

My very earliest church memories are of Mom taking me out on Sunday morning because I was being naughty. (I believe I got a good scolding and there may have been more dire threats involved, because I remember crying.) That hour in church seemed to go on forever. Those were the days of The Red Hymnal and every week the order of service was exactly the same, so I was always so relieved when the collection plate came around because I knew then that it was almost over. During the offertory we always sang Psalm 51: "Create a clean heart in me, oh God, and renew a right spirit within me." Part of the song goes: "...cast me not away from thy presence..." and I remember as a little kid thinking this was so terribly sad, because I thought it meant someone wasn't getting any "presents"!

Church may have seemed interminable, but Sunday school was more fun. We'd all troop into the parish hall and sing, this time from The Green Book. Song No. 66, "Jesus loves me, this I know," was always at the top of the Sunday school hit parade. Pastor Baudler would speak to us briefly, then we would adjourn to our classrooms. I remember some really wonderful Sunday school teachers, including Pauline Opp, Violet Hoff Lindemann, Martha Mehlhaff and Frieda Bender. As little children we learned the Bible stories and each Sunday had to memorize a Bible verse. Our lessons were taught from a four-page pamphlet that always had a color Bible scene on its cover. We used to take them home and put them in a ring binder so we could read them over and over again. At home Mom also read to us from the Egermeier's Bible storybook. I wonder how many times we heard about Joseph and his brothers and the plagues of Egypt and Moses and the Israelites in the wilderness? It wasn't until I was older and read the unabridged version of the Old Testament that I realized how much they left out in Sunday school! We definitely got the G-rated version of a very much R-rated story.

When we were seventh graders we entered confirmation school. Each Sunday we would sit in the first two pews of the church, girls on the right side and boys on the left, a throwback to the old days when all the women had sat on one side of church and all the men on the other. I think the pastor wanted us in front so he could make sure we had been in church. And it made us feel special. Confirmation was a big deal, not only in our lives as Lutherans, but as a personal milestone. It meant we were growing up. We went to confirmation classes every Wednesday night during the school year and for two weeks during Bible school. In those days the church was very big on memorization: we memorized Luther's Catechism, the 10 commandments, The Lord's Prayer, The Apostle's Creed and all their "meanings," each of which ended, "This is most certainly true." Pastor Baudler also had us memorize the books of the Bible in order, a few hymns and some of the Psalms. He must have been a good teacher because I don't ever remember being bored in his class. One day he took us on a tour of our church, the church we thought we knew so well, and explained to us how the architecture and the furnishings of the church reflected the fundamental teachings of our faith and the mystery of the trinity.

On confirmation day all us girls had a new white dress and the whole class wore corsages of palms and red carnations and white robes. But before we were confirmed we underwent a public examination in which we were called on to regurgitate some of the stuff we had memorized. None of us knew when we would be called on or what would be asked, so it was nerve-wracking. Pastor Baudler left the year before I was confirmed, and his last confirmation class was the last at Zion to be examined in front of the whole church on confirmation day. My class had its examination a couple of nights before the big event.

Today when I go back to Zion I think of friends and family and the generations of Haupts and Wolffs and Becks and Pfeifles who have worshipped there -- some who I haven't seen for years, some who have departed this world -- and I feel close to them once more. It is then when I feel the Apostles Creed most fervently, especially the part that says, "I believe in the communion of saints..."

(Paulette Haupt Tobin grew up on a farm near Eureka and graduated from EHS in 1973. Today she lives at Grand Forks, N.D., and is a reporter for the Grand Forks Herald.)