TILIW - UCC and Pastor Nancy Mack

Us-and-them_Anita Mallinckrodt_Walter Kamphoefner_swung from trees_met in the Peace Corps_kiss your ring?_Eden Seminary_Janet and Don Fuhr_ye olde towne painter

Gentle readers, I was born in the early 1950s in Jefferson City, MO, a plenty German American town, and I was immediately baptized and raised Catholic. From my young perspective, it was always us-and-them when it came to considering the religious environment around me. Notice, I didn’t say, us-against-them. I think my family and relatives were so confident of our moral high ground, that we didn’t resent or feel threatened by any other church. (But don’t even think about dating a non-Catholic girl, Paul!)

Really, I didn’t much consider other faiths except…Jewish…well, you can’t absorb the Bible stories without bumping into a bunch of Judaism. And occasionally, I was mystified by “exotic” beliefs like Hinduism or Buddhism. So, I can easily forgive myself for my total ignorance of the various religious struggles that took place among the early German immigrants here in Missouri. Now, fast forward to the early 1990s when I started reading some of Anita Mallinckrodt’s writing about Augusta history. Even then, I didn’t recognize the contest, but I was starting to learn the players.

And this might be a good time to review a paragraph from Part 1 of my UCC story. I’m sure you recall 😊 that I quoted a paragraph from a talk that Pastor Nancy Nollau Mack once gave on the origins of the United Church of Christ. She said, “The German pastors were widely scattered on the frontier and suffered physical and social isolation. In addition to the opposition from the “Free Thinkers” or rationalists among the German immigrants, the Evangelical pastors suffered from attacks by groups of ultra conservative Lutherans who developed a militant, antagonistic attitude toward the unionistic groups. They considered it a sin to serve a united church because they believed the Reformed were “children of the devil.”  (((That era sounds uncomfortable to me.)))

Now, it’s autumn of 2025, and I’m perusing Dr. Mallinckrodt’s small book, Ebenezer Evangelical Church - In Its 1800s Community. In her introduction, Anita (I think I can address her that way because I knew her fairly well) writes, “Ebenezer Church was founded in an unusual settlement at an unusual time by unusual people.” I’m not sure what that means, but it sounds good. BTW Augusta is still an unusual settlement with unusual people in an unusual time.

Cover design by Jody McWilliams.

As I read on, I see there was indeed trouble among the Protestants. Much ire was directed at Hermann Garlichs who arrived at Femme Osage Creek in 1833 and established the first Evangelical church west of the Mississippi River. It seems the Christian Rationalists (Free Thinkers, like Friedrich Muench and Julius Mallinckrodt) were vigorously opposed to him. And the Lutherans seemingly weren’t that crazy about being a part of an Evangelical Union.

Now this gets confusing, but Mallinckrodt points out that our town founder, Leonard Harold, donated a city block for a church and school. A building was used by the followers of Muench, but the Evangelicals (including the Lutherans) used it too. Eventually, according to Mallinckrodt, “After about a decade as a community church, the Augusta German congregation no longer got along well. In 1858 it divided into a Lutheran congregation and an Evangelical one.” The following year the Lutherans built a log church east of the Augusta settlement.

And via email from Nancy Mack: “The Evangelical Church of the Prussian Union pastors and Lutheran pastors migrated to America separately. The Lutherans and the Reformed churches had a long history of antagonism in Germany. I don't think the Evangelicals had any particular antagonism toward Lutherans, other than being upset that the Missouri Lutherans (who later became Missouri Synod Lutheran) vilified them in regular articles in the widely circulated Lutheran publication called: "Der Lutheraner."

And in his book, Germans in America, Professor Walter Kamphoefner, who grew up on the family farm near Matson, MO, states, “The German religious landscape on both sides of the Atlantic was further complicated by a development in 1817, the three-hundredth anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. Prussian king Frederick William III, dismayed that he could not attend communion with his Lutheran wife because of his Reformed faith, issued a decree combining the two denominations into a new Evangelical state church, also known as the Prussian Union. In some parts of his realm this was accepted, but there was also some resistance from some “Old Lutherans,” and to a lesser degree from some “Old Reformed” Protestants.

The Augusta Branch Library has Walter’s books, of course, but maybe you’d rather own them -   https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/295334.Walter_D_Kamphoefner

Okay, gentle readers, as I see it, the German immigrants brought with them Catholicism, Rational Christians (Free Thinkers), and Protestants, in the form of the German Evangelical Church of the Prussian Union (followers of Martin Luther and followers of John Calvin.) Today, in our neck of the woods, it appears that the Catholics, the Lutherans, and what became the United Church of Christ, are chiefly what’s left standing. Although…I remember a certain deceased contractor in Augusta who privately told me that even though his relatives love to go to church and sing to the high heavens, he believed his ancestors swung from trees. Also, I think it’s fair to say that Dr. Anita Mallinckrodt was a Free Thinker. So, possibly the Rationalists are still quietly out there.  

Maybe I should mention that we have a Buddhist temple, not all that far from my house. https://www.augustamomuseum.com/post/tell-it-like-it-was-the-buddhists-are-coming

And now that I have thoroughly butchered Anita’s book on Ebenezer, let’s move on to my 2025 recorded interviews with former Pastor Nancy Mack. She was born in 1946 in St. Louis, MO. (((And remember, anything in parentheses is my addition.)))

Nancy Mack: I went to all Catholic schools…elementary, high school, and a Jesuit University. In the time I went to high school and college…Vatican II happened, where Pope John XXIII liberalized things; it was a very exciting time.

paulO: …when they turned the altar around to face the people…

NM: They had the Mass in English…or whatever the tongue was of the country…so people could understand it. But the next pope, Paul VI, sort of slammed that door shut, and said birth control in all forms was a mortal sin. And I was living at the time in South America as a Peace Corps volunteer. If you asked a woman how many children she has, she’d usually tell you how many living…and how many dead…usually about the same number. So, those were folks who really needed to have access to healthy birth control. And I just felt that it was wrong…morally wrong to make that kind of decree that was going to cause suffering, and death, actually.

So, I made a moral decision to separate myself from the Catholic Church. And then I kind of lost my faith altogether for a while…and didn’t go to church…then Paul (Mack) and I…we got married and had children, and then…

pO: Can I stop and ask what year you met and married?

NM: We met in the Peace Corps office in 1970. Paul was in Brazil, and I was in Paraguay, and we met in in the…office in Chicago after we each had come back. So, we had a lot in common…and I was in graduate school in Chicago in social work, and he was working for the Peace Corps, and I got a part-time job in the office there. Then we got married the next year…we celebrated our 54^th anniversary…this year.

NM: So, Paul and I had children…living in Wisconsin at the time…that’s where Paul’s from. We started feeling like maybe our kids needed some kind of moral education…and we had become friendly with the pastor at the UCC Church in town. So, we started going there…I just sort of felt like God was pulling me…in that direction.

pO: Do you think you were attracted to that church because of your great-grandfather?

NM: No. I knew nothing of my great-grandfather at the time! My father’s parents died when he was a child…6 when his father died and 16 when his mother died…and he married my mom and converted to Catholicism. …I knew that there were pastors in his background…but like many converts, he was very Catholic, very involved in his religion. So, I never really knew much. I joined the UCC because I really respected their theology and social action.

NM: And then I got really involved as I am wont to do and was on the state-wide committee. I was at a church conference one time in Madison…and the head of UCC in Wisconsin, a man that I really looked up to…like this wonderful grandfather that you always wanted to have…he saw my maiden name on the check that I was writing for lunch. And he said, “Nollau? Are you related to Louis Edward Nollau?” And I said, “Yeah, I think he’s some kind of great-grandfather…way back.” And this man that I respected and looked up to…got up from his chair…and got down on one knee and he said, “May I kiss your ring?” I thought, good heavens, this man…thinks my great-grandfather was something…I should find out about it. That was the start of my looking into his history.  (The Rev. Louis Edward Nollau, a religious pioneer and key figure in the establishment of Eden Theological Seminary, died in St. Louis on Feb. 20, 1869, and was born July 1, 1810, in Prussia.)

pO: So, how or where did you train to be a pastor?

NM: I went to Eden Seminary. That too is a little bit serendipitous; I always thought there was some kind of divine hand in that. I got a job at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, and I was in charge of chaplaincy and social work. Because I was in St. Louis, it was a lot easier to go to Eden Seminary, because in those days they didn’t have online learning. But I graduated from Eden…the same year that Louis Nollau, my great-grandfather was born…it was the 200^th anniversary. So, I graduated that year, and the other serendipitous thing was that Louis Nollau preached at the first graduating class of what became Eden Seminary. So, I graduated from the same seminary that he was the first preacher at.

pO: Maybe just briefly mention where you were served before Augusta…

NM: Augusta is the only church I served because I was so old by the time I finally…

pO: Gotcha!

NM: It was my first church and I loved it. I didn’t want to retire, but I was 71, and my husband wanted to move closer to the grandkids, and I did too. I just wasn’t ready to give up my church.

pO: What years were you in Augusta?

NM: I started in 2012, and I left in 2018, six years.

pO: Since I’ve been here…since 1976, I’ve always found that the UCC people were the most…easy going, liberal…maybe liberal is the wrong word, but they weren’t judgmental. Does that go back in time?

NM: Oh yeah. …I’ve just found another quote…one of the theologians that was at Eden Seminary, he described this Union Church that became UCC as, “representing a world view that was a third way between the orthodox, mostly conservative Lutherans, and the Rationalists. Evangelicals took faith seriously and passionately but with a largeness of spirit which kept doctrine in perspective.”

pO: Alright, that’s going to be useful in my writing.

pO: Well, you’ve given me enough to make a story but…is there anything else you want to say about Augusta, and you can mention names if you feel comfortable…

NM: Yeah, I just love the people. I felt that they were so open and embracing…of me and Paul. …I became very close to Janet Fuhr because her husband, Don Fuhr, was on the Search Committee that hired me. And he and Janet were very helpful…they helped us move from our house in St. Louis to the parsonage.

And Don was amazing. He used to do all these mission trips…to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. He’d gone to Joplin after that tornado. He was just a great man, who collapsed in his garden, doing what he loved. He had had an aneurism. I was at the hospital, and did the funeral, and I got really close to the entire family. Janet is just amazing…she still plays the organ almost every Sunday (at Ebenezer).

Don Fuhr was also once the chairman of the town board.

NM: At Ebenezer, everybody pitches in…Jan Mallinckrodt was the liturgist nearly every Sunday. Others would also serve as liturgist as needed. So many people worked to put on  the dinners; it’s just really a community experience. Rob Siem was the chairman of the Board when I was there and was always working on fixing things around the church and parsonage. Others would come to help on “work days” helping rake leaves, etc. People often participated in community events with other churches in the area.

NM: I loved…Paul worked as a barista at Kate’s Coffee with Randal and Marj Oaks, and we were just kitty corner from Kate’s Coffee…I was a regular over there.

pO: …backing up to Don Fuhr, didn’t he also take it upon himself to keep the steeple clock running?

NM: Yes, yes! I have to tell you when I was back in Augusta this week, I just really felt like I’d come home. When I heard that church bell ring on time, I just about cried. It was so much a part of Augusta. And Paul (Mack) took over that job…so he was always futzing with it; always so upset if it didn’t ring exactly on time. I know Randal (Oaks) has taken it over now, and he apparently has done a really good job. It was really on time the whole time I was there (in 2025).

NM: One of my other good memories of Ebenezer is watching you paint that tower. I’m afraid of heights, and I remember standing there…and you had those umpteen-zillion ladders to get up to the clock part of it. I was thinking, oh my God…I can’t believe he’s doing that.

pO: I’m lucky I’m still alive after all the chances I took as a painter!

Ye olde towne painter preps the south face of the Ebenezer clock. (Photo by Nancy Mack.)

And here to tell you all about the town painter is Augusta Bottoms Consort: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DyXpzox0qc

Gentle friends, I’m wrapping it up, but I want to leave you with a photo I first saw among some prints that Janet Fuhr shared with me. I came across the photo again in Anita’s Historic Augusta – Its Buildings and People – 1820-1900.

A photo of Ebenezer when there were stairs up to the pulpit. Mallinckrodt states: “Interior photo courtesy of Rudy Hollenberg.”

Do good deeds, do good work, and stay curious.

paulO

If you wish to read more stories, or want to make a donation to Friends of Historic Augusta and Tell It Like It Was, please use this link: https://www.augustamomuseum.com/tell-it-like-it-was-stories