ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, September 15, 1996 TAG: 9609160117
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-18 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: WAKE FOREST
SOURCE: ROBERT FREIS STAFF WRITER
Generations of the faithful have stepped across the threshold of the Little Holiness Church into a true sanctuary.
Within the one-room, white-frame refuge, they've escaped worldly cares and found a rare sense of unity.
It's been a long, hot summer across the South. A rash of arsons at predominantly black churches has made a sense of racial progress in our region seem less substantial than a plume of smoke.
However, at the Little Holiness Church in rural Montgomery County, black and white have joined hands and raised their voices in a common song of praise, as their parents and their grandparents did long ago.
"What makes me feel good is when you feel the hand of the Lord in it. All obstructions gone," says the church's matriarch, "Sister" Kate Fears.
Sister Kate is a venerable 95 years old now and confined to Heritage Hall Nursing Home. But her spirit still guides the church.
It's palpable on Friday and Sunday evenings, when the sedans and pickup trucks arrive and park underneath the evergreen boughs.
The church's present minister, Frankie Vaught, unlocks the door beneath the sign that says, "WELCOME." Inside, the furnishings are few and functional: wooden slat benches, an altar and pulpit, and a piano.
When the service begins, and for the next hour or so, you can't hear the crickets sing through the window screens for the joyful noise within. This is not a place for mortal flesh to keep silent.
The swells of enthusiastic prayer, song and testimony seize everyone and don't subside until after Vaught, a white man, embraces a black man dressed in overalls and tells him, "I love you, brother."
"It's not the crowd, it's what you get into them," Sister Kate says. "This little church will make you preach your head off."
Not many folks outside of northwest Montgomery County know about the Little Holiness Church, even though it's been around for nearly 80 years. Sister Kate's father built it in 1917.
On the other hand, for those who grew up in Wake Forest, the black community where the church is located, or in nearby communities such as McCoy, Toms Creek, Sunnyside or Brush Mountain, this house of worship has been a strong cultural presence.
The Little Holiness Church's interracial congregation reflects how people have always mixed in this area, like the confluence of two streams into a larger river.
People say there's an abiding sense of civility that's traceable to the days when nearly everyone made a living in the coal mines along Brush Mountain and McCoy.
Deep below the earth, digging coal fostered a meritocracy of muscle, where black and white worked side-by-side and developed a sense of cooperation. After all, up from the darkness and covered with soot, "You couldn't seen nothin' but a set of eyes," one old miner says.
All the mines closed years ago. Yet the atmosphere of mutual respect between the races endured, and people thought nothing of maintaining relationships by visiting each other's houses and worshiping together.
"It brought the people together," Sister Kate explains. "There was a spirit of unity among them. They grew up together. They were friends, and it didn't leave."
She grew up in Wake Forest, an African-American enclave founded during Reconstruction by ex-slaves. Her father was a respected community elder and a carpenter who built many company houses for mining communities.
The Little Holiness Church began with a gesture of interracial goodwill. Lumber for the building was donated by the Cowan family, owners of the extensive Kentland plantation, and milled at their sawmill on Toms Creek.
Originally it was designed to replace a burned-down church that Wake Forest residents attended. But Sister Kate recalls a Pentecostal tent meeting not long after the Little Holiness Church was built that swept the area with a religious fervor that affected blacks and whites.
"Right from then on, they worshiped together. It was just heavenly."
Sister Kate's story is also one of overcoming barriers. "From a child, I loved to read the Bible," she says. "Revelation stirred my whole soul."
The Pentecostals were a religious group that opened two doors for her, stressing informality over high-church structure and allowing women to lead as well as participate.
Sister Kate can't recall the moment when she was first moved to stand up and speak publicly about her faith. "It was first a burden and then a blessing," she recalls.
Black and white people now grown recall Sister Kate when they were children, beating on a drum or tambourine and singing at a camp meeting or at small services in their homes.
"Around our parts she was accepted, because she was the Lord's messenger," says local historian Jimmie Lee Price.
Locally, or at tent meetings in West Virginia or Kentucky, Sister Kate would testify. "I'd just go on and say what the Lord give me. I didn't learn this thing in seminary. It comes down from above."
And for years she ministered to the Little Holiness Church, keeping the church going after a new, larger facility was built in Wake Forest. "She refused to let this church shut down," present-day minister Vaught says.
Age overcame her, and now Sister Kate's legs don't allow her to move around. At the nursing home she keeps her Bible and camp meeting songbook nearby and the nurses ask her for prayer sometimes.
Vaught took over the ministerial duties about six years ago. His life reflects a spirit of redemption. Earlier in life, Vaught was a hard-drinking man who wore himself out digging coal and pounding Hokie stone for Virginia Tech's buildings.
"The Lord made a change in me," he says, and made his bad ways disappear along with his health problems. Believe what you will about faith healing's validity, but Vaught says, "When you experience something, you don't have doubts."
When he preaches, Vaught gleefully stamps the altar like a clogger and waves his arms. "Why would anyone want to sin when they could have this?" he asks the flock.
Those that attend the Little Holiness Church come to express themselves, driving out anxieties and concerns like bats from an attic. They stand, raise their arms and pray aloud instead of silently.
"We're just ol' country folk having a good time with the Lord," Vaught says. "Just like a family," adds Esther "Queen" Jones of Wake Forest. "We just get together and talk."
When people at the service trade the lead on hymn singing, the church becomes a blend of influences. White voices carry traditional Appalachian rhythms and inflections.
Then Ernestine Sherman plays African-American gospel with an irresistible toe-tapping sway when she sings:
Oh the sweet relationship I now enjoy
For I no longer feel sad
Peace now abides and sin cannot annoy
Oh say, but I'm glad!
When twilight turns to night, the service ends, and folks leave feeling better.
Says Bertha June Hill: "When you come here, you don't worry about what goes on outside."
LENGTH: Long : 139 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Alan Kim. 1. Members gather at Little Holiness Church onby CNBa recnet Friday evening service. (Ran on NRV-1). 2. Mack Reynolds of
Norris Run displays his faith by wearing this buckle to most church
functions. 3. Sister Kate Fears (inset and above) keeps her tattered
camp song books at her nursing home bedside. 4. Leonard and Bertha
June Hill lead the congregation in a hymn during a Friday night
service. 5. Esther "Queen" Jones stands up during a hymn at the
church. To Jones, other church members "are just like family."
color. 6. Minister Frankie Vaught gestures with open arms during a
sermon at Little Holiness Church.