By Daniel Schantz
The wooden pew is a kind of symbol of the church in the past century.
For a preacher”s son who grew up in the 1950s, the church pew provided me with stability, discipline, and plenty of fuel for a child”s imagination.
Stability
Almost everything in those old churches was made of wood. Wood was warm, smooth, pretty, and as stable as an anvil.
Children sat with their parents during worship in those days before graded worship, a practice that many churches are reviving today.
The first thing a child learned in church is that God is forgiving. The second thing he learned is that church pews are NOT forgiving. At least once in every service some hapless child would slip and crack his head on a pew.
BONK! Everyone would cringe at the sound.
The bonk would be followed by a few moments of silent shock, and then the sirens of suffering would wail.
Running in church was a capital crime back then, but no child ever went to the gallows, because running contained its own nemesis. Sooner or later a running child would slam into a church pew at about 97 miles per hour. It was the only lesson in crime and punishment he needed.
Like gravity, or the stability of the seasons, the unyielding nature of church pews was somehow comforting. You could count on it.
You always knew that your pew would be there on Sunday, because church pews could not be rearranged. They weighed as much as a bulldozer and seemed to be bolted to bedrock. In case of a nuclear attack, the walls and roof might sail away, but the pews would still be sitting pretty.
At times I thought maybe the pews moved a little, but I was wrong. Like, when the six deacons tromped down the aisle to return the offering plates. The pews seemed to tremble, like a minor earthquake.
Inspired by this seismic event, we boys discovered if we would all sit in the same middle row and would swing our legs out and back in rhythm, we could create movement registering about 4.2 on the Richter scale. It was great fun, but when we got home, there were a few aftershocks to deal with.
Yet, looking back, I realize now that the pews did not move; it was the old wooden floor that moved.
A loose pew was a menace, like a loose cannon on a ship. I once encountered a church with a loose pew. It was a back pew inhabited by a bunch of giggly girls, so my friend and I decided to sober them up a bit. I sat on one end of that pew and he sat on the other. On cue, we both leaned back as hard as we could. The monstrous seat creaked and cracked, then slowly tilted backwards, about five inches. The girls let out a scream and threw up their hands. Everyone in the church turned around to see what had happened, including my mother.
It was suddenly clear to me why church pews were fastened down tight. Someone could get killed! By his own mother!
Discipline
If you could somehow be saved by good works, then sitting in a church pew for an hour would be the first thing to try.
Pews were always too close together. You could never be casual or comfortable. You couldn”t cross your legs or rest your forearms on your knees. You had to sit up straight, which was good discipline for posture, but murder on the hip bones.
On “pack-a-pew” night of the revival, there would be so many visitors in your row that you would have trouble with basic bodily functions, like breathing and blood circulation.
If you were seated in the middle of a crowded row, it was almost impossible to get out to use the restroom, unless you were double-jointed. So you learned to “hold it,” no small task for a boy with healthy kidneys. I soon learned always to sit “shotgun,” on the end of the row. I still do, after all these years.
In contrast, many of today”s churches are like O”Hare International Airport, with arrivals and departures all hour. Members stepping out to answer their cell phones, or to get a drink, or because they are mildly bored by the sermon.
“Member 247 is departing aisle 4.”
“Member 113 is arriving at aisle 7.”
Back then, if you were trapped in a pew and bored, your best option was to sleep, sitting up, with your eyes open, if you knew what was good for you. Only small children were allowed to lie down on a pew to sleep.
Some of the best sleep I have ever had took place on a warm, summer, Sunday evening in church. I would lay my head back on my mother”s lap and stretch out on the pew. I would nod off when the preacher was saying, “My text this evening is . . . “ and I would awaken when he was saying, “Let”s be standing and singing our invitation hymn.” That was my idea of a good sermon.
Inevitably, at some point, I would slip off my mother”s lap and end up face down on the hard oak pew. My mouth would fill with the bitter taste of old varnish, aged oak, and body sweat. It”s a flavor you don”t soon forget.
All the discomfort of church changed in the 1960s when padded pews made their debut.
We were scandalized! Criticisms ranged from “Silly!” and “Getting soft!” to “Poor stewardship!” and “Liberalism!”
Secretly we welcomed the softer seats, but for years we suffered from a guilty conscience for being so comfortable in church. No longer did we have the slightest chance of earning our salvation through suffering.
Imagination
Out of sheer desperation we children learned to amuse ourselves in church.
A church pew could be anything a child wanted it to be: a race car, a locomotive, a log cabin, even the OK Corral. Whenever we sang “Master the Tempest Is Raging,” my pew would turn into a boat. I would stand up in my vessel and shout, “Peace! Be still!” Then I would plop down hard, as if the wind had obeyed me.
Polished by a thousand cotton dresses and wool suits, a church pew was as smooth as baby powder on glass. If you were wearing corduroy slacks, you could push off the armrest and sail across the room in three seconds flat, a kind of pew surfing.
If you could make a church pew long enough to go all the way around the world, it would put all other modes of transportation out of business. You could shove off from some high place, say, Pike”s Peak, sail around the world, and glide into San Diego a few hours later.
The smoothest pew was the back pew, because it was everybody”s favorite. Nursing mothers sat back there, to be discreet. Volunteer firemen and LPNs sat there, to make a quick getaway. Teenagers liked it, because they could avoid the scrutiny of their parents. Trouble is, you had to get to church early if you wanted that coveted row.
One good source of entertainment was the songbook rack. It was a kind of junk drawer, filled with baby bottles and rattles, plastic bags of Cheerios, Kleenex, white ladies gloves, empty Chicklet boxes, and who knows what else””plenty of things to stimulate the creative young mind.
On the left of the rack was a small hole that held a stubby pencil, used to fill out the visitor card, but it was usually missing because we boys discovered early on that if you put that little pencil inside the fuselage of a paper airplane, you could obtain some rather impressive distances.
On the right side of the rack was a larger hole for empty Communion cups. It was often a repository for pacifiers or Chapstick or sucker sticks. We boys used it as a launching pad for our spring-powered ballpoint pen rockets. “We have liftoff!”
By far the most entertaining place of all was under the church pews, a magical world of shoes and gum wads, stray coins and church bulletins. But children were strictly forbidden from crawling under pews, for modesty reasons. However, if a mother in front of you dropped a baby bottle, then you were free to dive under, crawl through a forest of legs, and retrieve it. Since other boys had the same idea, it became a kind of Jacques Cousteau underwater race, “The Search for the Missing Nuclear Container.”
Forever
Church pews have been around forever, and the news of their death has been exaggerated. True, churches in multipurpose buildings have been forced to use boring, flimsy folding chairs. My heart goes out to them. And some churches have sold their pews to antiques dealers who paint them bright colors and market them as hall seats.
But the only real threat to church pews is declining church attendance. Thousands of churches all over the world still use pews, and numerous companies manufacture them.
In the future they might be made of ugly plastic, with a built-in digital screen and electronic ports.
But I predict that against church pews, the Gates of Hell shall not prevail.
Daniel Schantz is professor emeritus at Central Christian College of the Bible in Moberly, Missouri.
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