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Dramatic reading recalls church's Oregon roots
The occasion was a "reader's theater," a dramatic reading staged in St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Baker City, one of the six churches in this diocese that were built by Nevius more than 125 years ago. The role he had in planting churches throughout Oregon, eastern Washington, Idaho and eventually Alaska, is legendary among the people here.
A native of upstate New York, Nevis moved west from Alabama after his wife and children died from Yellow Fever in 1870. After a brief, unsuccessful time as dean of Trinity Cathedral in Portland, he was urged by Oregon's Bishop Benjamin Wistar Morris to "go east."
Most of the six churches he built in eastern Oregon are still used for worship today. "I have been in five of them and they are as solid as a rock," said Willis H.A. Moore of Honolulu, past president of the National Episcopal Historians and Archivists and convener of Eastern Oregon's centennial committee.
Another person who has been in all of them, many times in fact, is Bishop Rustin R. Kimsey who served as diocesan bishop for 20 years until his retirement eight years ago. "[Nevius] was one of the great missionaries of the church," Kimsey said. "The drama put forward in wonderful way how indefatigable he was in his relentless goal to plant the church in these little rural places where only a few hundred people lived.
"He was wise enough to say ‘The Episcopal Church needs to have presence there.' He brought small groups together, formed them, then left to go to another community to replicate that," Kimsey said, comparing Nevius to the travels of St. Paul. Nevius was responsibility for the building of more than 30 churches, church historians say. Along with each church he often started a parochial school eagerly taught botany to anyone ready to listen.
What better role?
"It was fun playing God," said Moore, whose role as the Deity in the dramatic reading was to affirm the dedication and work of the pioneer missionary who expresses doubts about his life's accomplishments. The role of Nevius was played by the Rev. Roger Fairfield, a deacon in Baker City and a cast of others each represented one church that Nevius built.
Lynne Burroughs, a drama teacher, church musician, composer and theater director in Baker City, who wrote the 20-minute production, said that in search for "a dramatic literary device" she turned to God. "I put God in the middle of a ship going to China. He was there with Reuben Nevius, who was dreadfully ill, to give him a shot in the arm. Reuben had been in hospital for seven months and they had picked him up on a mattress and carried him on board the freighter bound for China where he was going to visit his brother who was a missionary," Burroughs said.
Historical records show that Nevius' friends donated money so that he could take the trip to visit his brother.
"Feel good about what you have done," God tells Nevius according to the script, "…and by the way, Alaska is open and waiting for you." In fact, Burroughs said, Nevius did make a complete recovery on that voyage to China, visited his brother and family, returned Oregon and then went to Alaska to start more churches there.
"The indescribable thing is that the church plantings that Nevius was able to secure lasted," said Kimsey. "They were substantial kinds of seedlings he put forward. He made sure a building was erected to create an icon of stability and then the people would support it. By the time Robert Paddock, the first bishop was consecrated and arrived in 1907, there were substantial Nevius churches throughout eastern Oregon."
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