The American Baptist Publication Society chapel cars on the western frontier of faith

Baptist History and Heritage, Summer-Fall, 2003 by Wilma Rugh Taylor, Norman Thomas Taylor

Although the American frontier is usually defined as the time of settlement preceding 1892, the frontier for the settlement of churches in the West could be extended after the turn of the century, into the 1920s and beyond.

After the completion of the transcontinental railroads in the 1880s, untold numbers of towns were left along the tracks lost in a spiritual wasteland. In these towns thousands of railroaders and others, bereft of the comfort and inspiration of a church, lived lives of desolation and even debauchery, endangering their mortal souls and the safety of the public riding the trains.

Men and women of faith traveled to those western towns, willing to suffer extreme hardships to bring the gospel, but the distances were too great, the rail boom too quick, the rowdy rail towns too vile, and the saloon power too strong. Facilities for organizing congregations were far too limited, and the support for building churches was sadly lacking. The farther west the preachers and padres rode the less evidence they found of Christianity, not just in the rail towns but also in the frontier settlements a day's ride from the depots. The common saying was, "There is no law west of Kansas City, and west of Fort Scott, no God."

But God was not ticketless as the rails stretched from coast-to-coast. From 1890 through two world wars, thirteen chapel cars--three Episcopal, three Catholic, and seven Baptist, equipped with chapel areas outfitted with pews, organs, and stained glass and adjoined by miniature parson-ages--were hauled across many of the same tracks that first carried hell-on-wheels towns. During the early years, those churches-on-rails were pulled with the invitation and expense of railroad companies that had learned from hard experience that a railroad, or a great nation, cannot be built on speeding iron wheels alone. (1)

The First Baptist Chapel Cat

The first Baptist group to build and make use of chapel cars was the American Baptist Publication Society. The publication society, which eventually butt seven chapel cars, developed the idea after Minnesota missionary Boston Smith, upset because his thriving Sunday Schools could find no place to meet, asked the Northern Pacific Railroad for the loan of a coach to use during the winter months.

Excited over the success, he shared his vision of a railroad church car with his pastor, Wayland Hoyt, who, in turn, shared his vision with his brother Colgate Hoyt, vice president of the Northern Pacific and of other railroads and a Northern Baptist layman. The Hoyts formed a syndicate of powerful friends, including John D. Rockefeller, Charles Colby, William Colgate, and E. G. Barney of the Barney & Smith Car Company, and the first Baptist chapel car, Evangel, was built and put into service in the spring of 1891.

Boston Smith's maiden journey on Evangel took him across the Northern Pacific line through Minnesota, North Dakota, and Montana. Since it was the publication society's mission to distribute gospel literature, he gave away tracts and Bibles, available in seventeen languages. One German boy at Livingston, Montana, ran home to tell his mother that she could get a Bible in their language at the car. He ran back, through the cold wind, barely able to gasp his request for a Bible. On receiving it, he clasped the Bible to his chest and sped away to his mother. Smith related, nit was a most touching sight." (2)

In 1895, 874,000 railroaders were employed in the United States. (3) No other evangelistic effort, with the exception of the Railroad YMCA in selected towns, focused with such success on the salvation of these railroad men and women than did the Baptist chapel cars. Starting with that maiden journey, Baptist chapel cars traveled to over four thousand towns in thirty-six states--from the Pacific tides to West Virginia's hills, through the Midwest plains into the windswept canyons of the Rockies and Tetons, to Arizona's copper towns, across the Land of the Five Tribes, and from the Texas Panhandle to the Canadian border. Thousands would hear the gospel and be baptized in rivers, streams, lakes, water barrels, holes dug in the ground, and even a grease pit of an abandoned garage.

The First Baptist Colporteurs

E. G. Wheeler and his wife were the first Baptist chapel car colporteurs. He said of the new venture, "If nothing is better than God, then nothing is too good for God. Why should we crawl like snails when we might better take to the rails?" (4) When the Wheelers, onboard Evangel, pulled into Everett, Washington, in the spring of 1892, several hundred houses existed on the city's fringes, but hundreds of men and women were sleeping in tents and crude shelters. Every hour of daylight, men labored to erect shipyards, factories, and mills, while others pounded spikes to lay rails to connect their city with Tacoma and Seattle. These people had no graveyard, no jail, no schools, and no church.

On April 11, 1892, Chapel Car Evangel made history as the first church to hold a service on the bay side of Everett. That first service occurred even before the saloons were running. On the night of the service, Wheeler baptized a young man from Philadelphia in the bay near the car and rejoiced, "It was a beautiful sight! It was the first baptism as far as we know, in that country." (5)