Church and Religion

Second German Congregational Church in 1932

The church was the center of life for many of the German colonists in Russia. That focus on religion and church was transplanted in America. Most social and political activities of the Volga Germans in Portland were centered on the church. In a typical church, Sunday school began at 9:30 a.m. The children were placed in classes according to their age. The classes included singing, lessons, and explanations of the lessons by a teacher. The Sunday morning service started at 10:45 a.m. The service is similar to what is found in most Protestant churches. The choir would sing a selection or two and the entire congregation would sing four or five hymns (in many churches from the Volga Gesangbuch). The pastor would preach a fundamentalist sermon - sometimes short and sometime long. Some churches also had an evening service called "Christian Endeavor" that began at 7:00 p.m. and lasting and hour or so. The week contained other activities such as choir practice, ladies aid meetings, men's prayer meetings, and visits to the sick.

The church was the gathering point for many special events such as baptisms, confirmations, marriages, mission festivals, choir cantatas, church picnics, Sunday school programs, fund-raising events, and sports teams. The Easter and Christmas celebrations are fondly remembered by all that attended. Periodically the various German-Russian churches would gather together on Sunday nights for joint services.

According to Ray Koch, many of the German Russian children from the Congregation churches enjoyed attending Vacation Bible School (VBS) at the German Church of God on NE 13th and Skidmore.

From the original settlements in the United States until the 1940s, the traditional religious practices were carried on as they had been in Russia without change. The factors that sustained this tradition were vigorous religious fervor, a mutual feeling of strangeness in a strange land, and the ties of common nationality and faith.

As time passed, a conflict between the immigrant parents and their children who are American-born arose. Among the common issues which caused friction are religion, language, clothing, recreation, and amusements. The American born dared to scrutinize and to question the traditional customs imported from Russia.

The transition from German to English was a serious change in the church and brought about a decline in the Brotherhood and church attendance. The older Brethren held with great tenacity to the German language. The insistence on the German language brought about an exodus of young converts who organized prayer meetings of their own; a development strenuously opposed by the older members.

The older generations sometimes didn't want to have their children learn English because they feared their falling away from belief, that their hearts would become a tangled wilderness of passions and self-centeredness. It was a matter of religion, of wanting the next generations to have something to sustain them in the buffetings of this world.

An excerpt from Emma Schwabenland Haynes book Emma's Thesis - The German-Russians on the Volga and in the United States highlights the tensions that came with change. "One of the outstanding characteristics in the religious life of German-Russian Americans, is the extreme quarrelsomeness prevailing in most of their churches. This is partly due to the fact that the more progressive members desire to introduce innovations of various kinds of the church services, while the more conservative members insist on the retention of old customs."