By Stephen Smoot
There’s a little white church in the valley that stands in the memories of generations of the faithful in Pendleton County. Just off the side of US Route 33 between Franklin and North Mountain, it rests in a dell – or vale, if preferred.
Only a few days after the dawn of a New Year, the church remains decorated with a broadly shaped and colorful Christmas tree and candles set to illuminate each window. While every church celebrates Christmas as the second most important holiday of the year, Friends Run also sees it as an opportunity to give back
“One of the gifts to the community” from the church, Pastor David Morris shared, “is to have a Christmas Eve program” that includes “a small play and the message of the season.”
“Carolyn Simmons, director of the board,” Morris states, “is responsible for getting a play that’s appropriate.” In early November, those participating do a reading. They practice it weekly to perfect the performance. Also, in celebration of the season and to spread the message, members of the choir are joined by other congregants to sing for residents at Pendleton Manor.
The elegance of the Friends Run church is expressed in its bright white exterior and unassuming peaked roof, but also in the surrounding glades of large trees. Simple designs often reflect great purpose, and the Church of the Brethren has more than three centuries of fulfilling that, starting in Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1708 and leading to outposts of faith as far separated as US 33 in Pendleton County and the lush, hot forests of Nigeria.
Plain simplicity on the outside, though, gives way to an ornate ceiling with deep roots in German-American religious folk art.
If worshippers settled into the lightly shaded natural wooden pews by chance looked to the ceiling during worship, they would see a simple five-pointed nautical star on a field of white, surrounded by concentric rectangles filled with intricate floral designs.
In the design, one can discern the background of the German-Americans who came to America in the colonial period, adapting the culture of their mother country to serve the needs of an old people settling in a new land.
Pennsylvania Germans, more often called Dutch due to American misunderstanding of the word “Deutsch,” developed their own styles of art. They adorned their barns with different styles of stars. Many today commonly, but mistakenly, call them “hex” signs, mainly due to claims by an early 20th century tourism guide trying to build up interest in southeast Pennsylvania barns.
According to an article published by the Glen Cairn Museum, the stars have Christian meaning. A 12-pointed star symbolizes the 12 Apostles or 12 Tribes of Israel, while one of six points represents the days of active Creation by God – minus the day of rest. A five-pointed star signifies the five wounds Christ suffered on the cross. In the Roman Catholic tradition, a nautical star also represents Mary, who is called in some faiths “Stella Maris,” or “the Star of the Sea.”
The intricate floral designs stem from a Pennsylvania German art form called “fraktur.” As the Pennsylvania German Society states, “there was a love of beauty and a fantastic impulse to embellish.” It went on to describe how “birth and baptismal records, music books, religious texts, tiny bookmarks” and other everyday items contained elements of “fraktur,” which included both images and stylized text. Possibly this was a remnant of the Middle Ages traditions of illumination.
Lutheranism, founded in the German states of the Holy Roman Empire, served as a parent church for the Brethren, who founded their own denomination in 1708 under the leadership of Alexander Mack in – where else – Germantown. Pennsylvania.
German immigrants came through Philadelphia and settled in lands west of the city. Benjamin Franklin himself looked upon the newcomers with dismay, especially their unwillingness to learn the English language and British customs. Often the outsiders, each generation sought fresh lands to farm, creating a slow migration over the generations west to the Great Valley, then southward up the Shenandoah.
Those who found their way to the Potomac Highlands and Greenbrier area percolated west through gaps and valleys to hack a living from the wilderness and defend it from the French, Indians, and any bad fortune that might come their way.
When they came, they brought the German-American traditions of art, but also good fellowship, staunch faith, and a conservative frugality.
In the 1940s, Church of the Brethren congregants in the Friends Run area desired their own meetinghouse. They purchased the building of the Mount Olive Lutheran Church located in Cave. As a Church of the Brethren publication about area churches noted the new owners of the church “painstakingly dismantled it, numbered each board and transported the boards to a donated tract of land along Friends Run on US 33.” It added that the structure was carefully reassembled and still stands today.”
Reverend J. W. Hess from Harrisonburg, Virginia, officially dedicated the church on Sept. 9, 1951.
Although “they would sing old songs of Rock of Ages,” Morris shared that when interviewing for the Friends Run post, he heard, “not to do traditional worship” all the time, but “do something that relates more to the person.”
Morris uses techniques that teachers might find familiar. For example, when he delivers messages from the Bible, he will often sit in a chair to “see eye to eye.” He also shared how, when delivering a lesson based on the 15th chapter of the Gospel According to Luke, instead of doing the traditional verbatim reading from the pulpit, he told the verses as stories and “gave it all from memory.”
Church members also combine to help the less fortunate in the area. The Friends Run church joins other area churches in the Ministerial Association to serve a dinner and hold a meditation in one of the six weeks of the Lenten season. They also combine with most of the rest of the association to put together a fund that helps those struggling in the area with a once per year small assistance grant.
He praised the churches of the association for activities that “bring together all denominations.”
And the Church of the Brethren as a whole continues to seek out new frontiers. Just as the forefathers of those who now live in Pendleton County traversed across the mountains into dangerous lands, sometimes confronted by dangerous people, the Church of the Brethren has established new frontiers in Africa. While the United States has about 83,000 congregants, Nigeria alone contains more than 300,000 who adhere to the faith. Despite the violent hostility of area Muslims and the other dangers inherent in the countryside, missions continue to thrive, spread the Word, teach the people, and convert more to the faith.
Though a small congregation, the Friends Run church’s dedication to the Spirit gives them a powerful impact both as a support to help those in the community who need it and as a beacon of faith.
But most of all, as Morris reminds, the church must continue to excel in its holy mission to “go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
Cutline:
Pastor David Morris of Friends Run Church of the Brethren shows off the church’s Pennsylvania Dutch fraktur inspired ceiling and tells of its history.
