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Our denomination, our form of Christian worship, was conceived during the years leading up to the Elizabethan era of British history, and was born during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. This, as those of us who saw the movie Elizabeth know, was a time of great political and religious upheaval. Our founder, John Knox was born near Edinburgh, Scotland, in about 1515, a few years before the reign of Elizabeth. He became a Catholic priest in 1536, and by 1540 he found himself a follower of the Protestant reformer George Wishart.
Six years later Wishart was burned at the stake as a heretic. The Reformers retaliated by assassinating the cardinal responsible for his murder and seizing St. Andrew's Castle. Knox was among those Reformers who were captured and sent to France as galley slaves. Three years later, Knox was able to return to England.
When Mary Tudor became Queen of England, Knox again had to flee to the European Continent. It was during this exile that he met John Calvin in Geneva, Switzerland. After Mary's death, and after her sister Elizabeth became Queen of England, Knox returned to England and then on to Scotland. He continued his religious and political work, and the Scottish Parliament made Presbyterianism the state religion in 1560.
We should note that Scottish Presbyterianism is a part of a larger tradition called the Reformed Tradition. It has always been the most international of the main Protestant bodies. Unlike Anglican or Lutheranism for example, Reformed churches often organized without government support and sometimes under persecution. There are Reformed churches throughout the world.
But we are focusing on Presbyterianism this evening. British history including that of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales continued, as it often does, throughout the next 150 years or so. Much conflict. By the mid-1600s, many Presbyterians of Scottish and Scotch-Irish descent decided it was time to take their faith and their lives somewhere else - and that somewhere else was America. The first Presbyterian congregation was established on Long Island in 1640.
As many of our Sunday School teachers will tell you, the Presbyterians immediately began exerting a force on Colonial, and later United States politics much greater than our numbers would indicate. We contributed our structure to American government; we established schools and universities, including those for Native American children; the focus of our faith led us to lobby for and participate in virtually every attempt at social improvement on the agenda; plus we were represented at the forward edge of every frontier - be it intellectual or geographical. In the process, we squabbled among ourselves on occasion and formed and reformed various versions of Presbyterianism, but Presbyterians we remained.
Most of that was happening on the eastern seaboard of our country, and spreading across the country from east to west. But things were happening in the Far North, as well.
Alaska was first spotted by Russians in 1728; the Russians and the Russian Orthodox Church worked in Alaska for the next 150 years. By 1860, we are told, there were some 12,000 Christians in Alaska, including both Russians and Natives.
The Russians sold Alaska to the United States in 1867. Many people will argue that the Russians had nothing to sell to the Americans. The land belonged to the Natives who lived here. This argument has great validity, but was not the prevailing opinion of the day. The sale was recognized; the Russians left; and the Americans moved in.
From 1867 to 1877, nothing happened. Or at least from a person of faith's point of view, nothing happened. Conditions among the Native people were terrible. Pleas for health care, education, religious instruction, all went unheeded until the meeting of the General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church held in Chicago during the summer of 1877.
Now the Presbyterian Church, especially in Alaska, has several "saints" - one is without a doubt, the Rev. Sheldon Jackson, another would be Mrs. Amanda McFarland. We also have the Rev. S. Hall Young, and Ann Bannon, RN. There are many others, and you can read about a good number of them in The Yukon Presbyterian, for sale just outside these doors.
Sheldon Jackson was in attendance at that Chicago 1877 General Assembly. He had been a missionary on the American frontier for about 20 years - planting churches in Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Arizona, and elsewhere. He heard about the conditions among the Natives in Alaska during that early summer meeting, and by August 10 of that same summer, he and missionary-teacher Amanda McFarland stepped off the boat in Wrangell, Alaska. This began a period of Presbyterian influence on Alaskan religious, social and political life that was a bane to some and a marvel to others. Our influence ranged from the northern most tip of the territory to the southern most tip. We established the first churches in the interior as well as in southcentral.
We exerted untold influence on education, on the provision of health care, on the politics of liquor, on the establishment of Statehood for Alaska, and the Alaska Native Land Claims effort. During the first years, the work was centered in southeast Alaska, that which is now the Alaska Presbytery.
But it was not long before the Presbyterians turned their eyes even further north. We established the first Christian work on St. Lawrence Island in 1890 with the arrival of Rev. and Mrs. Gambell. The Rev. Leander Stevenson arrived at Point Barrow, also in 1890.
It was the report of "Gold Discovered in the Yukon" that perked up the ears of the Presbyterians on July 17, 1897. Our second "saint", the Rev. S. Hall Young had served in southeast Alaska for ten years between 1878 and 1888. He was back home in the Presbytery of Wooster, when the Home Mission Board contacted him that same summer to return to the Yukon. He was here by the autumn, first working in Dawson, then in Nome, up and down the Yukon River, in Fairbanks, in Cordova, and a multitude of points in between.
In May of 1899, he returned to the General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church, this time meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He petitioned for the establishment of a new Presbytery, a Presbytery dedicated to the northern and interior work of the church. Permission was granted and the Presbytery of Yukon was authorized.
Back in Alaska by July 26, 1899, three men met at Eagle on the Yukon, and formed the Yukon Presbytery - in attendance were the Rev. S. Hall Young himself, the Rev. James Kirk who would stay at Eagle; and the young Rev. Egbert Kooce who went on to Rampart and St. Michael where "he experienced a good attendance at his services."
The Revs. Horatio Marsh, MD, and Samuel R. Spriggs were unable to attend the organizing meeting, but continued their work at Point Barrow.
That was exactly 100 years ago. The work continued. We continued to serve the people along the Arctic Slope and helped prepare the people to take over their own religious and political leadership; we did the same on St. Lawrence Island.
We served the Gold Seekers of the Interior and those who came later to help build the roads and other infrastructure to make a thriving community. We were with the seekers of Copper at Kennicott and at Cordova.
Yet another "saint", the Rev. Bert Bingle arrived in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley even before the colonist farmers - ready to provide spiritual and community support as they built a new community.
This very congregation where we are worshipping this evening was the first congregation established in the new community of Anchorage in 1915, built along Ship Creek.
Presbyterians were movers and shakers during the Alaska Pipeline Ministry.
Whenever something truly significant happens in our society, the Presbyterian Church and its people are there in the thick of it, trying to apply the Word of God to life around them.
That's probably why I wrote the book. What I wanted us to think about and remember was how God has always led Presbyterians to be in the thick of it. If there is an issue or a happening facing our community or our society, we are in the middle of it - actively participating in the discussion and the squabbling that it takes to sift out differing viewpoints to discern just how and where our faith leads us to act and to be.
Sure, we try to do this in a "decent and orderly" fashion; we try to provide structure and rules for the battle, but we don't back away from the battle itself.
Sometimes we turn out to be more right than wrong, and sometimes more wrong than right. But no one will accuse us of being oblivious to the whole matter, whatever it might be.
Established in 1560 in Scotland; in 1640 in America; in 1877 in Alaska; and 1899 in the Yukon, we now look forward to the Year 2000.
May we cherish our past, look to our future, and never lose:
- our commitment to the weak, the sick, the imprisoned, the oppressed;
- our commitment to those with the skill, courage and where-with-all to build a society, be it through the use of our minds or through the skillful wielding of a pick and shovel;
- our commitment to God;
- our commitment to change.
For we are the portion of God's children committed to change; always ready to consider a new idea or a new frontier; for ours is a church and a way of life, "Reformed and Always Reforming."
Thank you.