THE WAY WE WERE

Parents insisted that many activities of our young lives centered on church

By Wally Wachter
Retired Herald Managing Editor

M AINTAINING YOUTH ACTIVITIES has become a difficult challenge for many churches in today's generation.

Back during our younger days, a good part of our summer activities centered around the church. There were picnics and wiener roasts, ice cream and box socials, summer schools and encampments. All of these were part of the social sphere provided for us through our religious institutions.

Churches and synagogues provided activities that held our chief interests and provided us with a variety of activities that satisfied our recreational needs.

In church we met new friends, visited old friends and fulfilled obligations to our own religions, and mainly to our parents.

The coming of the automobile and television opened vast new recreational horizons for today's youth which drew interest away from the church-sponsored programs. Hence the role of the churches in social and recreational promotions began to dwindle. A few churches, with solid programs and hard work, have been able to hold their younger people, assuring them a strong future. But many face a worrisome future.

When our parents or grandparents, from all ethnic backgrounds, came to America from the ``old country,'' they brought with them a rich heritage in religion which they prodded their children to follow. Being strangers in a strange new land, they banded together by religious belief to found worship places. And, by nationality background, they formed ethnic clubs.

A Robert E. Ripley ``Believe It or Not'' item in Sunday papers back in the early 1930s cited the Farrell-Sharon area as having more churches and nationality clubs in relation to its population than any area in the United States.

Many of the churches for years held dual services, one in English and the other in the language of the group that established the church. Very few still carry on this tradition.

Some of the religious customs from the old country continued to be practiced here until the younger generations forced them aside.

The importance of church was strictly instilled in us when we were young. There were no excuses for not rising early Sunday mornings to attend Sunday school and then services. We became involved in church groups which provided us with fun and entertainment as well as with spiritual guidance.

Liberalization of old ideas on intermarriages is another factor that has taken youth from their own churches and even denominations. I recall when it was a major family calamity for anyone to even consider marriage outside their own congregations or nationalities. This stubborn idea of our forefathers has faded with the changing times.

Taking inventory of our youthful years, we find only fond memories of the part of our lives that was centered around the church. Would that our offsprings could have the same advantage.