Houses taken over

This year a dozen women in our local church taught ESL to non-native English speakers in the community and offered child care during class time. It was fun. At the debriefing in May our director discussed workbooks, summer follow-up opportunities—and mentioned in passing that child care will not be offered next semester.

The child care decision was explained as being due to a new state law requiring that all church personnel involved with children must receive official criminal background clearance. The far-seeing ESL director realized the implications and judged that it would be prudent to scrap the baby-sitting: Fewer people would be willing to take the extra step of filling out the necessary forms. The resulting smaller pool of workers would mean that our ESL cadre would be in competition with the Women’s Bible Study ministry and the Sunday nursery ministry for manpower.

Not an eyelash batted, save for one of the younger women who chirped that it might be fun to be fingerprinted.

My thoughts went to a scene from Doctor Zhivago, where the medical doctor walks through the front door of his once opulent Moscow house for the first time after serving on the front. Scruffy squatters eye him contemptuously from every corner as his wife Tanya gingerly introduces him to the humorless chief operatives: “This is Comrade Yelkin, our local delegate. He lives here.” “Oh, how do you do?… Welcome,” Zhivago says pleasantly. “’Tis not for you to welcome us, comrade,” interjects another, whom Tanya informs him is the chairman of the residence committee.

If the local church cannot be trusted to know its people well enough to decide who is fit for nursery duty, there is nothing much to say.

As Zhivago and Tanya ascend the stairs to the one room left to them as living quarters, Comrade Kaprugina cannot resist a final jab: “There was living space for 13 families in this one house,” she sneers. “Yes,” says the soft-spoken Zhivago, “yes, this is a better arrangement, comrades. More just.”

It was not long ago that the state cracked down on church homemade desserts here in Pennsylvania. The year was 2009, and as an elderly parishioner of St. Cecilia’s began unwrapping wares baked by fellow church members, a state inspector on the premises noticed that they were not store-bought and forbade their sale. It was the end of Mary Pratte’s coconut cream pie, Louise Humbert’s raisin pie, and Marge Murtha’s “farm apple” pie, as well as a tradition as old as church socials.

We Christians are a good lot, by and large. We know Romans 13 and desire to be model citizens. Would we have been sad but obedient when the 1933 “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service” barred people of Jewish descent from employment in government? Would we have had searchings of heart but complied with the 1935 “Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor” that interdicted marriage between Jew and German? Would we have sighed but acquiesced in 1938, when government contracts could no longer be awarded to Jewish businesses, and in October of that year when Jews were required to have a “J” stamped on their passports?

If the local church cannot be trusted to know its people well enough to decide who is fit for nursery duty, there is nothing much to say, except that we had better get back to a New Testament model where pastors knew their flock. If bakers of coconut cream pies are notoriously dangerous people, then we have brought these statist regulations on ourselves, and more’s the pity.

The woman sitting to my right at the ESL meeting said (not disapprovingly) that from now on if a junior high event takes place at someone’s house, a person must be present who has state clearance. I hazarded at that point that it looked like government intrusion, and no one said a word, as if I had passed gas and everyone pretended I had not. As if I were the kind of person who did not care about the children.

In 1 Chronicles 12:32 the tribe of Issachar is commended for being “men who had understanding of the times.” Doctor Zhivago did not understand the times, therefore he assumed that if the government decided it was fair to divvy up his house, then it must be. Later they would walk off with his paintings, his fine china, and his books. There is no stopping camels once they get their nose under the tent.

Email aseupeterson@wng.org