FINDING GOD
FINDING a search for the spirit in lee county
BY EVAN WILLIAMS ewilliams@florida-weekly.com
S unday morning rituals can range from sleeping off an all-night beer and wine festival with an ice-pack and jumbo bottle of Advil to slipping into a suit and taking children in starched white shirts off to a morning church service - while looking forward, of course, to pancakes with enormous quantities of blueberry syrup later, at the IHOP.

Churches such as the St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church in Dunbar is where many flock in there search for God.

If you happen to enjoy attending a religious service regularly or just once in a while (as an afterlife insurance policy, perhaps), and you're looking for a place to worship in Lee County, there are more than 250 locations of all religious varieties listed in the yellow pages.

"The Baptists and the Catholics together are the biggest slice of the Lee County [churchgoing] population," with almost 70 locations between them, said Joan LaGuardia, a former religion reporter for The News-Press.

The number of alternative religious venues in Lee County alone would satisfy even the most zealous church-hopper: Christian Science, Greek Orthodox, Pentecostal, Seventh-Day Adventist, Metaphysical Science, Jehovah's Witness, Synagogues, even one Buddhist temple (Wat Lao Dhammavanno, on Veronica Boulevard in North Fort Myers), a mosque (The Masjid Ibrahim, located at the corner of Hunter Street and Broadway Street), and more.

PHOTOS EVAN WILLIAMS Top; Guest speaker Rev. Jesse Denson at St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church. Bottom left; Audrey Stephens, in front, with, left to right, Ken Gebert and Gail and Dick Boyd, at Covenant Presbyterian Church on McGregor Boulevard. Center; Pat Gano at the Christian Science Reading Room, downtown Fort Myers . Bottom right; Judy Wintermute, volunteer at All Souls Episcopal Church, in the storeroom at the thrift store.

Each one has its own style.

For churchgoers at the St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church located at the corner of Prince and Dunbar Streets, the intensity of worship came in waves at a recent service.

The spiritual soiree began at 11 a.m. and rolled on for more than two-and-a-half hours. Rhythmic sermons and tuneful chants cresting in ecstatic pulpit-thumping and dancing rose high and thundered, then fell, to quiet, whispered prayers. Women in fanciful hats fanned themselves with the Sunday program.

Young ladies in white dresses stood by the back doors and in the aisles, serving as vestal ushers; older men wore suits and younger ones wore polos or buttondown shirts and slacks; the children sat, with varying degrees of patience, in the front pews.

Midway through the service, and following a succession of hymns, chants, devotions and readings, parishioners stood to offer personal prayers to the crowd.

"It's our kids," one woman pleaded. "We can't get them to say 'Please' and 'Thank you...' We're gonna lose 'em. They're gonna wind up in jail or shot, because they're in the wrong place at the wrong time. It is our responsibility to take care of these children and teach them."

After more music, and the welcoming of visitors to the church (in this case, one Florida Weekly correspondent), Reverend and Pastor Charles A. Chapman rose to the pulpit to encourage tithing. Before he could start, a cell phone began playing its own, less than holy, song.

"Thou shalt not bring a cell phone into the Lord's House!" he thundered.

A rash of muffled laughter ensued and the ringing phone was immediately silenced.

"The financial report was given," Rev. Chapman said gravely. "Our spending going out is greater than what's coming in."

Soon church members clutched dollar bills and formed a line, which proceeded to the front of the church where bowls sat on a table, slowly filling with money.

Most churches depend on money from their community to operate, but each has certain financial advantages. All property used for "religious purposes," said Lee County Property Appraiser Kenneth Wilkinson, is tax free - a condition guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

"I'm assuming the philosophy behind [that law] would be that it's a good public purpose," he said. "You have 27 tax exemptions in Florida - religious use is one. I'm one of those that believe I have a strong personal faith. I was baptized Episcopalian by my mommy, (but) it says I'm Baptist on my dog tags."

Douglas Langston, professor of Philosophy and Religion at New Florida College in Sarasota, echoed Wilkinson's sentiments.

"On a community level, religious organizations can do a lot of good by bringing together like-minded people who do charitable acts," he said. "On an individual level, individuals seem to need it, seek it, foster it."

Soon after the tithes were collected, Rev. Chapman's wife and the principal of Lee Charter Academy, Dr. Shirley Chapman, started thumping out a raucous twochord, two-line hymn on the electric organ, while the congregation chanted with near abandon, "I come to lift him up! I come to praise his name!"

Almost two hours into the proceedings, Rev. Jesse Denson, a guest speaker, growled and howled and roared out a sermon while muttered participations emanated from the back rows: "All Right!" and "Okay, okay!" and "Uh huh," and "Hallelujah!"

The service concluded with a group prayer, then everyone held hands for the final hymn.

"I come for the fellowship," parishioner Ruby Nixon said, as ushers opened the doors and the crowd - women gossiping, men smiling, children darting - drifted out into the blazing heat of a summer day in Dunbar. "I come for greeting the other people and allowing the Holy Spirit to dictate."

Earlier the same morning, sometime before the 8:30 a.m. service at the Covenant Presbyterian Church on McGregor Boulevard, Pastor Bill Stephens dressed himself in a black robe and green stole (like a very long scarf, it is "the color of the season," Mr. Stephens said). Possibly, he fine-tuned his weekly sermon, which that day was on the power of prayer.

The grounds around the church appear vast and groomed, bordered by McGregor's royal palms. The church and surrounding buildings are made mostly of white brick. Inside the sanctuary, stained glass stands out against all the whiteness, a vague mosaic - a picture of a starburst against a dark blue and purple sky.

Speaking to a sedate early morning crowd, Pastor Stephens, who has some of the sly charm and looks of actor Willem Dafoe, reassured the congregation, in soothing tones, that, "It's not the prayer that's magical - not the words of the prayer or the place that it is prayed in - but the heart. If your heart is right, then you'll be headed in the right direction."

Stephens and his wife, Audrey, moved to Fort Myers from Bakersfield, Calif. about two years ago, Mrs. Stephens said.

"We're the only church offering a ballroom dance class (on Wednesday nights)," she added, socializing in the courtyard with friends and cookies, after the early service.

Mrs. Stephens said she and her husband are enjoying Florida: he loves to golf and fish, she is involved with a ministry for teenage girls called The BABE event (Beautiful, Accepted, Blessed, and Eternally Blessed).

Mr. Stephens was also in the courtyard briefly to meet and greet parishioners before slipping away just in time to make it to another service (the 9:45 a.m.; his second of the four he delivers each Sunday).

While Sunday may be the point at which a community's religious fervor peaks, less-formal activities, even in the early afternoon on an average weekday, take place all the time, and may be found with a little (soul) searching - at All Souls Episcopal Church, on Cleveland Avenue in North Fort Myers, for example.

Volunteer Judy Wintermute was there late last week, taking inventory of recent donations in the church's thrift store, where she is assistant manager. She said here, like everywhere, the effects of the summer season are being felt. In the dim depths of a un-air conditioned storeroom in back, donated goods wait to be sold.

"Donation's are good, sales are good, but not as good as in the winter when the snowbirds are here," Wintermute said. "We also enjoy them volunteering in the winter."

In the upstairs offices of the church, Rev. V. Creighton Evans, pale and earnest, stepped from behind his desk and shuffled quickly over to a couch, where he sat and took a moment to clarify the word "worship."

"It's an active word," he said. "The congregation receives a message that God loves them and no matter how difficult the situation, God will walk through the crises with them. I believe that's the message I try to give, in one way or another, every Sunday."

On that same Thursday at the Christian Science Reading Room, on First Street in downtown Fort Myers, reading-room manager Pat Gano sat at her desk, in a room filled with copies of The Christian Science Monitor, magazines and CDs. Also, there are books - mostly by or about Christian Science Church founder and inspirational leader Mary Baker Eddy.

Gano said she attends the Christian Science Church on West First Street and McGregor Boulevard every week, and that the "Pastor," for Christian Scientists, is never one person, but two books: "The King James Bible" and Eddy's own "Science and Health: with a Key to the Scriptures."

Gano said her religion is an all-encompassing guide to survive everything from headaches to being tailgated to childbirth (her first, she said, went unexpectedly smoothly as a result of her faith).

"It's given me direction in everything," she said, pointing out a passage in Eddy's book, which ends with, "...man is not material; he is spiritual."

Whatever your beliefs or rituals, it helps to have a little direction, Professor Langston said, whatever that may be.

"I think most human beings need something to orient their lives, a guiding principle," he said. "That doesn't necessarily have to come in the form of a divine being or church. Albert Camus saw humanity as the guiding principle. He was a humanist."

And whatever you are or aren't in Lee County, there's probably someone else like you, and a place to remind yourself of what that is. ¦