Religions, teach tolerance

Painful childhood memories came flooding back with Joyce Mortin Berry's letter to the editor, about The Rathdrum Bible Church (Feb. 3). They had refused to let grandchildren sing for their grandfather's memorial service because their song was published by the LDS.

My Montana parents were raised 500 miles apart. I attended the schools they did. Eighth grade, was my happiest. A different school, only six children and only one of those was not my sister or brother. No one called me names.

It was 30 below and my maternal grandma finished milking just as a lady from the church showed up. This woman had holy conniptions and screamed, "No lady should wear overalls!" After much hullabaloo they were kicked out of church.

The other end of the state, my Methodist paternal grandfather moved his eight children into a 16-foot shack while he built a house. He was smack dab in the middle of two groups of German Mennonites, Catholics and Lutherans.

At school, my father and his siblings were called atheists and heathens. Some wonderful Christian men decided that the Mennonite preacher was preaching treason. Services were in German, as was the two public schools. So they hustled the preacher - who was the teacher - out of a school board meeting and hauled him off to the nearest tree, 15 miles away. Rev. Franz, with his hands tied, a rope around his neck astride a horse, began to tell these yahoos, "I'm an American. I was born in America, and IN MY COUNTRY, I HAVE THE RIGHT TO A TRIAL BY JURY, AND IF YOU HANG ME, IT WILL BE YOUR NECK IN THE NOOSE."

A lawyer in the bunch convinced them to cut him down and put him in jail. Many hearings and bail later, he was allowed to go home. He was allowed to preach one last sermon in German. (They had sentries in the back). He told his people our neighbors are afraid of us, we don't speak their language, we are peace loving people, so from now on this church will be in English. Mennonites had fled from Germany to Russia and to Montana as they did not want to serve in the war. Much against the parents' wishes, many Mennonite young men joined the Army.

At the same time, Montana passed a law against anything in German. No speaking in German, no German music, no German authors. No Bach, No Beethoven. Germans wised up and called sauerkraut "liberty cabbage."

If the spies found anything German in your home, they would take it and burn it. Mothers took their German family Bibles, wrapped them in oil cloth and put them in a crock and buried them.

At the university in Montana, they were having German book bonfires. One professor was so upset, he stole a bunch of the German books and music and hid it in his basement. How do you suppose the high school bands could play any music? How about the hymns? What did they sing in church, Howdy Doody? Mein Gott in Himmel?

I must have been 10 years old and every day, I was taunted and called a heathen. It sounded like a bad word. Our 30-year-old dictionary: A heathen lived in the Heath land in England. Way out in the country. They came to town a couple of times a year to stock up on food and supplies. They did not dress in the latest Paris fashion. They didn't go to church. It did not sound too bad to me. That was similar to my family.

Fast forward a few years. I married a transplanted German Mennonite in the Christian Missionary Alliance Church. His mother had started it. His father was a Veteran. Even though my husband and I were charter members of this church when it was organized and I was baptized, I was shunned and ostracized by the community. I had an un-church background.

A Lutheran Pastor adopted a black baby. The community gossiped. A neighbor's black granddaughter visited her grandma in the summer. This little girl played with my daughter. The community was so hateful to this child and to me, for allowing her in my home. My 10-year-old daughter came home from Sunday School and was saying our band teacher was going to hell. What? The Sunday School teacher said the band teacher had gone to the LDS church the Sunday before and he was going to hell. I was livid. I told my daughter I sometimes go to the barn, does that make me a cow? I knew the teacher's goal: He had come to teach and learn about small communities and planned to visit every church of his students at least once.

My first grandchild was baptized in the Lutheran Church. I was criticized for going and called a heathen for doing so. Thirty years later, my church sent me a letter asking me to resign as I had filed for divorce. My ex did not get one; he was in prison for incest.

I have wonderful children, and their spouses. All upstanding, God-loving people. None are drunks or jailbirds. I have the right and the responsibility to attend the baptisms and weddings of my grandchildren.

You can call me all kinds of names, but don't criticize my 35 grandchildren. Some of them are black, some are Indian and some of them are LDS. I love them all.

1 Corinthians 5:13

Kay Kalidja is a Hayden resident.