Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 2, 1995 TAG: 9507050010
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV12 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: FRANCES STEBBINS
DATELINE: SNOWVILLE LENGTH: Long
On a late June evening I learned about this tiny community's claim to be ``Jerusalem'' from the latest in a long, long line of Disciples of Christ ministers in a building that dates to the mid-1800s.
Mary Kearns, the student minister at Snowville for the past two years, described for about 40 listeners in an hour-long lecture the origins of her faith, with special attention to the New River Valley.
Two of the reasons the 29-year-old divinity student told us Snowville Christian came to be called ``Jerusalem'' was because it was the mother of so many congregations and the home of so many converts. It was the sixth Christian group started by a pioneer minister in the area, Chester Bullard, who left a lasting mark on Southwest Virginia's religious life in the 19th century.
Kearns ranks Bullard with Disciples fathers Alexander Campbell and Barton Stone as cornerstones of the church. Campbell and Stone are regarded as founders by members of dozens of Western Virginia congregations, some calling themselves Churches of Christ and Independent Christian as well as Disciples.
Kearns is married to another student at Emmanuel School of Religion, a Christian Church seminary in Johnson City, Tenn. Her husband, Jesse, also 29, serves as pastor of Pearisburg Christian Church, a Disciples of Christ church. The couple lives in Pearisburg and spends part of each week during the school year at their churches and part at the seminary.
Both are preparing for ordination in June 1996, and while Kearns technically is an interim pastor at Snowville, both she and church leaders say they hope their arrangement will become permanent.
The Kearnses are from Oregon. They came to the Tennessee seminary, although it is not an ``official'' Disciples school, because of its rigorous theological program, she said. She observed that although other Independent Christian theological schools generally follow a conservative and literalistic view of the Bible, Emmanuel encourages its students to examine Scripture critically, accept the findings of science and accord women the same ordination status as men.
The program last Sunday night, while not a typical worship service at which Communion is always provided, gave Disciples from several congregations a chance to learn in detail their heritage. Kearns, wearing a flowered dress rather than a pulpit garment, based her historical lecture on a thesis she is writing for her degree.
One of the several guests was the Rev. Gina Rhea, pastor of First Christian Church, a Disciples of Christ church in Radford. Rhea, who was one of the first ordained Disciples women to serve in Western Virginia, now has been at the university-area church for 16 years and has served as a mentor to Kearns.
Snowville is the mother church of many congregations in both Southwest Virginia and Tennessee. Steel Gray Shanklin, the only woman elder at the church, can count back six generations of her family who have worshiped there, just across the Little River in Pulaski County.
The Snows, a pioneer family from New England, founded the town in the 1830s. The history of the church, Kearns' extensive research reveals, is closely tied to this family and to Bullard, the young doctor who at 17, after painful soul searching and exhausting prayer, received the conviction of salvation then thought necessary for a true Christian. Bullard gave up the practice of medicine and in 1834 was ordained to the faith then known simply as Christian.
Over the next several decades, Bullard preached at countless places with his converts, perhaps reaching thousands, Kearns said. Though always a man who questioned specific doctrines and tried several denominations, Bullard mellowed over the years and came to regard the tolerance that an educated ministry brings as paramount.
That is Kearns' credo. She sees the disputes over strict or flexible interpretation of the Bible that continue to afflict churches as nothing new. After Bullard's death the denomination that once stood for unity was torn apart by several schisms. The once-proud Snowville congregation dwindled to one-fourth the size it had been in pre-Civil War days.
Today, Shanklin points out, it's a commuter congregation with about 30 worshipping regularly in the quaint frame building with its clear glass windows, wide planks, unpadded pews, a reed organ - over which a split once occurred - and a balcony where black worshipers once sat.
Barbara Aldrich now plays an electronic organ, and the congregation sings hymns such as ``For the Beauty of the Earth,'' taken from the 1979 ``Hymns for the Family of God.'' Kearns greets her congregation with ``Howdy'' and radiates enthusiasm. About 20 children and adults attend Sunday school.
People in wheelchairs can get into the church easily from the small rear parking lot. About 40 years ago, a fellowship hall and a few other amenities were added to the back of the historic church, and more recently, a picnic pavilion was built in the midst of the carefully-kept lawn with its old trees and flower beds.
Sojourner appears monthly in the New River Current. Its purpose is not to promote a particular point of view, but to inform readers of a variety of worship styles.
by CNB