For years, I kept a dark secret, carefully hidden from public view. I was embarrassed to let the world know:
I was going to church.
Really? It’s no secret now. When you are 83 years old, with the grim reaper breathing down your neck, of course you go to church!
I am covering all bets now by being involved in three, yes three, churches: Mt. Carmel PresbyterianChurch in Turbeville, First Baptist Church in South Boston and Dumbarton United Methodist Church in Washington, D.C.
So, what happened? As a young adult, I didn’t go much but I found comfort in church as 21-year-oldreporter in Dover, Del. I even sang in the choir. My beliefs didn’t run very deep, but I liked a place where loving people set aside their weekday struggles to ponder the meaning of life. What and who is God?
No one I worked with knew I went there. I mean, it isn’t cool to go to church, especially as a journalist. Looking for scandal, you certainly believe in original sin, but not much in salvation. You are cynically uncovering the misdeeds of bad people and thrilled when you can say: “Gotcha!!”
After I left Dover, a church member outed me to my former boss, who laughed out loud when he told me about it over the phone. He even put it in the history book he wrote about the newspaper!
I did go to church a few times in Las Vegas, but it was Sin City—not appropriate! Going to Glide Methodist Church in San Francisco was considered cool though—a defiant black pastor with a rock ‘n’ roll band.
In Washington, I found Dumbarton during a dark spot in my career when I had no one to turn to. I can’t say I was “born again,” but I found welcoming people in a kind of family away from my California hometown.
Of course, I didn’t tell my drinking buddies or fellow journalists about this highly subversive habit. Meanwhile, I was churning out church publicity, the modern form of evangelism.
My secret interest became useful at U.S. News & World Report, where few on the staff knew anything about religion. I wrote about inclusive language in churches, television evangelists and the 200thanniversary of the Methodist Church in the U.S. in 1984.
The magazine called on maybe a dozen staff members to collaborate on a story, “the religious left fights back against Jerry Falwell and the right.” All I had to do was get out my church directory and call six or seven members of this left-leaning church who were active in the movement.
“We couldn’t have done this story without you,” my boss told me.
Since judgment day has not come yet, what tangible benefits have I gotten from my flirtation with the afterlife? Well, the main one came in 1981, when I was assigned with two others to help serve at Dumbarton’s coffee hour. “Who is this Pickett Craddock, on the list?” I asked a woman friend. “Oh, she’s a single woman, Mike. You ought to get to know her,” she said, pointing her finger at my nose.
Well, I did, and we are still together. I did better finding a woman at church than in a singles bar. I got one who shares my values.
And to this day Pickett still brings snacks and sometimes signature dishes from the bed & breakfast to Mt. Carmel on Sundays. (Hm, maybe I should help her.)
