Speech: On The Occasion of A 75th Anniversary
Speech to the Congregation of The Community Church
of Prineville, Oregon On The Occasion of Its 75th anniversary
Delivered by Crook County Judge Scott R. Cooper, May 19, 2002
Nineteen Twenty Seven.
The population of Crook County is around 3,300. The population of Oregon hasn’t quite reached 1 million.
Most of the residents of the county are farmers and ranchers scattered up and down Ochoco Creek, Mill Creek and McKay Creek. Out O’Neal way, on a ranch along the Crooked River, a farm-boy named Tom McCall, is turning 14 this year. Most people pay him no mind, never guessing his future as one of Oregon’s most well known governors.
Prineville boasts two paved streets. Mostly, the towns runs north and south along Main Street, but the bridge across the river connecting Second Street to Crooked River highway, is causing the town to branch out in a more east-west direction. Fashionable residents live mostly along First Street, while some of the braver souls are building along the less desirable (and more flood prone) Third Street, near the magnificent new courthouse and the high school next door.
Automobiles and farm wagons mingle together on the busy streets. Privately, many dismiss the automobile as a passing fad. It’s skinny, bald tire have a bad habit of getting stuck in the mud, and it seems unrealistic that it will ever completely replace the more reliable horses and stagecoaches, which make Prineville a critical transportation hub for all of eastern Oregon.
The pride and joy of Prineville is the City of Prineville Railroad, built just 10 short years ago. The rail provides a critical link to the mainline in Redmond and keeps all-important shipments of wool and cattle going out as well as a little bit of timber, which a few people are hoping will someday provide a small supplement to their farm incomes.
The biggest social problem of the day is the running battle between the local sheriff and the Crook County’s bootleggers. This is the era of Prohibition, and while it wasn’t exactly a concept Crook County’s rough-and-tumble crowd embraced, it is the law of the land. More than once the sheriff has swept through the countyside, locking up every known moonshiner in the county in the courthouse basement. If you’re walking to church, school or the park nearby, the prisoners will call to you through the open, barred windows.
Maybe the liquor industry holds so much attraction because it provides one of the few entertainments in the community. Just under half the households in the county own radios. Talking pictures haven’t come to town yet. Television hasn’t been invented, and only the wealthier homes and businesses have electricity and telephones.
But the community does have churches, and if dance halls and saloons aren’t your thing, these are the next best bet for education, entertainment and polite company.
As early as 1879, itinerant Oregon missionaries had organized a congregation of the Christian Church in Prineville. By 1882, the Rev. Troy Shelley boasted a congregation of 20 souls. When he was unavailable, for he traveled frequently throughout eastern Oregon, his wife, Annie, was said to preach a fine sermon in his absence
A report filed by the Reverend Vanderpool in 1885 makes much of the baptism of 11 members in a single year. But more important than those 11, said the Reverend, was his single greatest accomplishment of the year: the successful reclamation of a single soul from the Methodists.
But much to the frustration of the Shelleys, the Vanderpools and others, the Prineville Christian church never really grew beyond a handful of members. For most of its existence, numbers hovered around 20 members, not that much different than the numbers reported by the Methodists and the Presbyterians. The last we read of the Christian Church in early Prineville is the 1928 report of Clarence Swander, General Secretary of the Oregon Christian Missionary Convention, who states simply: “Their building burned in 1927 which completely caused the assembling to cease. The church lives in name only.”
Now this is an interesting report. It isn’t so much what the Reverend said, as what he ignored. Let’s face it. Rev. Swander certainly knew why the Christian Church in Prineville no longer existed as a stand-alone congregation. He just didn’t want to admit it.
Like most other Christians of his day, the Rev. Swander couldn’t conceive of an ecumenical church. Like Rev. Vanderpool, he viewed Methodists and Presbyterians as people to be saved from the eternal flame through conversion to his own way of thinking. To Rev. Swander, the idea of three churches joining forces and cooperating was a threat to the nature of religion itself. Because the concept was so far beyond his paradigm, he simply chose to ignore it.
But Rev. Swander’s myopia aside, the fact is that something very powerful happened in Prineville in 1927. For practical reasons that had more to do with costs and space than with great philosophical and theological revelations, a small group of Prineville citizens embraced an idea unprecedented in their world and one which wouldn’t catch on in the rest of the world until social revolution swept the country in the aftermath of the 1960s.
In 1927, this congregation took a bold theological step in deciding that it really doesn’t matter whether we serve crackers or bread at communion. It really doesn’t matter whether the minister wears a suit and tie or a clerical collar. It really doesn’t matter whether the cover of the hymn book is green, red or blue. This congregation made the discovery and affirmed the principle that there is more in our Christian faith to unite us than there is to divide us.
What a wonderful theme. It’s a discovery that you all should be proud of. And the fact that you discovered it should be an example and a source of pride to the rest of the Prineville faith community.
Prineville doesn’t have a reputation around the state as a tolerant, open-minded kind of place. We don’t get credit for being big thinkers who started the state’s first ecumenical movement . Who cares? People don’t know lots of things about what makes Prineville special.
But we know. And one of those things that we know is that we have the kind of people who had the vision and who still carry that vision today to build and grow a church that says “Everyone is welcome here.” A church that says “We don’t care what your background is. We don’t care whether you’re high-church, low-church or no church. Come worship with us. Let us share with you the Good News that Jesus loves you and that he died for you--Methodists, Presbyterians and Disciples of Christ alike.”
What a message. What a treasure for any community. What blessing to Prineville.
Members of the Prineville Community Church, on behalf of your community, congratulations on your 75th anniversary. We couldn’t be more proud of you.
of Prineville, Oregon On The Occasion of Its 75th anniversary
Delivered by Crook County Judge Scott R. Cooper, May 19, 2002
Nineteen Twenty Seven.
The population of Crook County is around 3,300. The population of Oregon hasn’t quite reached 1 million.
Most of the residents of the county are farmers and ranchers scattered up and down Ochoco Creek, Mill Creek and McKay Creek. Out O’Neal way, on a ranch along the Crooked River, a farm-boy named Tom McCall, is turning 14 this year. Most people pay him no mind, never guessing his future as one of Oregon’s most well known governors.
Prineville boasts two paved streets. Mostly, the towns runs north and south along Main Street, but the bridge across the river connecting Second Street to Crooked River highway, is causing the town to branch out in a more east-west direction. Fashionable residents live mostly along First Street, while some of the braver souls are building along the less desirable (and more flood prone) Third Street, near the magnificent new courthouse and the high school next door.
Automobiles and farm wagons mingle together on the busy streets. Privately, many dismiss the automobile as a passing fad. It’s skinny, bald tire have a bad habit of getting stuck in the mud, and it seems unrealistic that it will ever completely replace the more reliable horses and stagecoaches, which make Prineville a critical transportation hub for all of eastern Oregon.
The pride and joy of Prineville is the City of Prineville Railroad, built just 10 short years ago. The rail provides a critical link to the mainline in Redmond and keeps all-important shipments of wool and cattle going out as well as a little bit of timber, which a few people are hoping will someday provide a small supplement to their farm incomes.
The biggest social problem of the day is the running battle between the local sheriff and the Crook County’s bootleggers. This is the era of Prohibition, and while it wasn’t exactly a concept Crook County’s rough-and-tumble crowd embraced, it is the law of the land. More than once the sheriff has swept through the countyside, locking up every known moonshiner in the county in the courthouse basement. If you’re walking to church, school or the park nearby, the prisoners will call to you through the open, barred windows.
Maybe the liquor industry holds so much attraction because it provides one of the few entertainments in the community. Just under half the households in the county own radios. Talking pictures haven’t come to town yet. Television hasn’t been invented, and only the wealthier homes and businesses have electricity and telephones.
But the community does have churches, and if dance halls and saloons aren’t your thing, these are the next best bet for education, entertainment and polite company.
As early as 1879, itinerant Oregon missionaries had organized a congregation of the Christian Church in Prineville. By 1882, the Rev. Troy Shelley boasted a congregation of 20 souls. When he was unavailable, for he traveled frequently throughout eastern Oregon, his wife, Annie, was said to preach a fine sermon in his absence
A report filed by the Reverend Vanderpool in 1885 makes much of the baptism of 11 members in a single year. But more important than those 11, said the Reverend, was his single greatest accomplishment of the year: the successful reclamation of a single soul from the Methodists.
But much to the frustration of the Shelleys, the Vanderpools and others, the Prineville Christian church never really grew beyond a handful of members. For most of its existence, numbers hovered around 20 members, not that much different than the numbers reported by the Methodists and the Presbyterians. The last we read of the Christian Church in early Prineville is the 1928 report of Clarence Swander, General Secretary of the Oregon Christian Missionary Convention, who states simply: “Their building burned in 1927 which completely caused the assembling to cease. The church lives in name only.”
Now this is an interesting report. It isn’t so much what the Reverend said, as what he ignored. Let’s face it. Rev. Swander certainly knew why the Christian Church in Prineville no longer existed as a stand-alone congregation. He just didn’t want to admit it.
Like most other Christians of his day, the Rev. Swander couldn’t conceive of an ecumenical church. Like Rev. Vanderpool, he viewed Methodists and Presbyterians as people to be saved from the eternal flame through conversion to his own way of thinking. To Rev. Swander, the idea of three churches joining forces and cooperating was a threat to the nature of religion itself. Because the concept was so far beyond his paradigm, he simply chose to ignore it.
But Rev. Swander’s myopia aside, the fact is that something very powerful happened in Prineville in 1927. For practical reasons that had more to do with costs and space than with great philosophical and theological revelations, a small group of Prineville citizens embraced an idea unprecedented in their world and one which wouldn’t catch on in the rest of the world until social revolution swept the country in the aftermath of the 1960s.
In 1927, this congregation took a bold theological step in deciding that it really doesn’t matter whether we serve crackers or bread at communion. It really doesn’t matter whether the minister wears a suit and tie or a clerical collar. It really doesn’t matter whether the cover of the hymn book is green, red or blue. This congregation made the discovery and affirmed the principle that there is more in our Christian faith to unite us than there is to divide us.
What a wonderful theme. It’s a discovery that you all should be proud of. And the fact that you discovered it should be an example and a source of pride to the rest of the Prineville faith community.
Prineville doesn’t have a reputation around the state as a tolerant, open-minded kind of place. We don’t get credit for being big thinkers who started the state’s first ecumenical movement . Who cares? People don’t know lots of things about what makes Prineville special.
But we know. And one of those things that we know is that we have the kind of people who had the vision and who still carry that vision today to build and grow a church that says “Everyone is welcome here.” A church that says “We don’t care what your background is. We don’t care whether you’re high-church, low-church or no church. Come worship with us. Let us share with you the Good News that Jesus loves you and that he died for you--Methodists, Presbyterians and Disciples of Christ alike.”
What a message. What a treasure for any community. What blessing to Prineville.
Members of the Prineville Community Church, on behalf of your community, congratulations on your 75th anniversary. We couldn’t be more proud of you.
posted by Scott Cooper | 4:23 PM
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