Churches of Carlisle, PA, an Introduction, by Judith Stiehm (Guest Post)

First Presbyterian Church, Carlisle, Pennsylvania

My friend Judith Stiehm is a political theorist who teaches at the Florida International University in Miami.  She spent a year in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, doing academic research at the library of the Army War College.  On weekends, she explored the town and surrounding countryside.  She has graciously allowed me to share the introduction to a non-academic book she wrote about her visits to the churches of Carlisle.  I think you will enjoy her perspective on this central Pennsylvania community.

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, population 18,000, lists more than fifty churches in its yellow pages, thirty of them within the city limits.  There is no mosque and no synagogue or temple, although there is a phone number for Congregation Beth Tikvah.  Worship is clearly an important part of the town=s culture, a culture which is not only mostly Christian, but also mostly Protestant. Still, the single Catholic church, St. Patrick=s, has not one, but two fine edifices. Since I am to be a part of this community for the next year, I have decided to attend services at a different church each Sunday in order to get a complete picture of the religious landscape of this small American city. Unfortunately, I missed the revival held at the Fairgrounds two weeks ago, but if there is another one in the spring or summer, I will be sure to attend.

.       Large and handsome churches are much in evidence.  They also seem to be the older churches.  I will begin with these to see if the newer, and often smaller, churches became necessary because the older ones had burst their seams, or if, somehow, their spirit faded or their tenets were displaced.

           Carlisle is 20 miles southwest of Pennsylvania=s capital, Harrisburg.  It is the home of the U.S. Army War College, Dickinson College, and Dickinson Law School.  It is embraced by the Pennsylvania Turnpike to the north and Highway 81 to the south. Trucking is a major industry.  One can easily walk anywhere in town, which is roughly two miles by two miles, and one can quickly find one=s way to open country--fertile farm land with the Appalachians on the horizon. The intersection of High and Hanover Streets, once the intersection of two Indian trails, is the town=s center. Churches occupy two of the four corners.  The other two are occupied by the old County Court House, which bears scars from Confederate gunfire during the Civil War, and the new County Court House, a four story, red brick building built in 1960, which replaced a series of market houses.  An Episcopalian church is located on the third corner, and the oldest public building in Carlisle, the First Presbyterian Church, has been on the northwest  corner since 1754. Since my great grandfather was a United Presbyterian minister in Sterling, Kansas, First Presbyterian seems a good place to start.

At ten thirty a.m. on a crisp fall day I begin my four block walk to a service due to begin at 10:45. I pass the oldest house in town at 119 E. High, a two-story, locally quarried, gray stone building with white mortar built right up to the sidewalk.  Behind it is a long but narrow tree-shaded yard. In the next block, I pass the Cumberland County Prison, built in 1854 as a replica of a Norman castle in Carlisle, England. Its fortress-like front is met by gray stone side walls, but a section of tennis-court like fencing and a modern insert, which looks like play-school blocks, gives it the appearance of a Frank Gehry idyll.  Having the barred windows a half block from city center reminds us that prisoners are a part of our society.

            Law enforcement began in Carlisle in 1754 with the construction of the first pillory.  This was also the year of the founding of the First Presbyterian Church--public and private policing, I suppose. The L-shaped gray stone building enfolds a grassy square.  Its sturdy stone tower has never boasted a steeple, though no one is able to tell me why.  George Washington worshiped here in 1794, when, as President, he led the troops that were on their way to put down the Whiskey Rebellion launched by Western farmers who did not want to pay taxes. Can you imagine a current President actually leading troops off to war?

The church=s rectangular sanctuary is sedately decorated with green carpets and dark red upholstered pews downstairs.  The pews in the three-sided balcony are upholstered in textured gray. The walls and pipe organ are white. Bright color is limited to the stained glass windows on three sides of the sanctuary.  Rectangular windows on the main floor, etched with a daisy theme, are paired with roman-arched windows in the balcony.  Once the congregation faced a long side of the ell; now there are thirteen rows with a center aisle that face a short side of the rectangle--more conventional, less egalitarian. Even without additional chairs 400 could participate in Christmas or Easter services. Today there are some 125 worshipers. All are white and clearly of the educated class.  Indeed, the minister=s robe looks greatly like my Columbia University academic gown.  The choir (small) is clad in royal blue with white trim.  They enter from a door behind the pulpit. Their music is supplemented by the "Super Singers@ a group of six children.

          Each pew contains a red booklet to register one=s attendance. It also provides a New Revised Standard Version Bible, published in 1989 in Nashville, Tennessee. It includes a chronology setting Biblical events in history, the Jewish calendar, and a list of Judaism=s seven feasts, thus establishing the Old Testament as Protestantism=s firm foundation. The Bible=s donor is honored with a book plate.  The pew=s hymnal has a bookplate too. 

There are lots of hymns in the hymnal: 150 pages of plain hymns, 100 pages of Psalms set to music, and 300 pages of topically arranged hymns.  There is also an order of service--Assembly, Proclamation of God=s Word, Thanksgiving, and Going in Peace. The offering comes at the end--so you can pay what you think you got out of it, perhaps.

Assembling is done in silence (except for organ music); a poem by William Blake is offered for contemplation:

Unless the eye catch fire, God will not be seen.

Unless the ear catch fire, God will not be heard.

Unless the tongue catch fire, God will not be named.

Unless the heart catch fire, God will not be loved.

.        Unless the mind catch fire, God will not be known

In the rest of this first chapter, we learn more about First Presbyterian.  In Judith's book, The Churches of Carlisle, she visits twenty churches, ranging from the large churches in the center of town to smaller congregations such as the New Life Missionary Baptist church, whose home is a two-room cinder block building. Publication of the book is in progress.  When it becomes available, I will let you know. 

Note from Caroline:  I have visited Carlisle numerous times when visiting Art's parents, who, until recently, lived just outside Carlisle in the town of Newville, Pennylvania.  They went into Carlisle for shopping, eating out, other events, and were members of the Carlisle Second Presbyterian Church, located in lovely contemporary style building on the edge of town.