Our Saviour Church History
Of the past sixty years of our church life, on which we look back today, I myself have been around almost forty of them. Having come to the United States on Christmas day 1948 from war torn Germany, the Lutheran Church, first in New York City and then here in Cresskill, had been the one strong bond tying my old world to the new. In all my homesickness there was the one sure conviction that my faith in Jesus Christ would carry me through. How comforting it was to hear the familiar words (even in another language), to sing well known hymns and finally to come to the realization that I belonged to the same house of God here as well as in the country I had left.
And then there were the people of the church! Families who had small children like ourselves. Many of them are still around. The little ones are grown up now but the memory erases the years gone by. Once while returning from shopping in Englewood with four year old Astrid, my daughter approached another little girl at the bus stop and started chatting with her. We accompanying mothers looked puzzled. "Oh, Mommy, this is Pam Angel. We know each other from Sunday School."
Astrid was baptized by Pastor Seifert in 1953. She must have been the youngest child in Sunday School. I carried her there as a babe in arms along with her sister Karin by my side. The church truly became a home for our family, especially since we had hardly any relatives around. Every Christmas Eve we brought the children to the midnight worship service. We let them stay up late so they could live through the wonder of that special night.
In time the girls were confirmed, went to college and chose a career in the arts. We had tried to protect them from evil and had asked God to help us. But on that fateful day in 1974 when Karin walked into the murderous house where her life would end we were not there. Pastor Huff from Trinity Lutheran Church in Tenafly was the first clergyman who arrived at our house after the tragedy. He said, "This is not the will of God. God has given us humans the free will to choose between good and evil. Karin has been a victim of evil." Later Karin's coffin stood at the altar where she had knelt many times before during Holy Communion. We buried her on a sunny day in August.
Life for our family has never been the same since then. The tragedy we lived through has been part of the history of Our Saviour Lutheran Church, Cresskill as well. This house of God which will embrace us not only in happy times but also in our hour of need, has been a shelter for all those who have come here in all their human misery and joy and so it is my wish today that it may be just that for many more years to come.
In the hope that by remembering the past we will go into the future with new zeal, members of the congregation have prepared this little book for your enjoyment. Reflections on three eras of our history were researched and written by three of us; reflections on special topics were contributed by seven others. These are noted in our Table of Contents.
We thank every one of these faithful members for their contribution.
Irene Schlegel
Christ the King, the Last Sunday after Pentecost
November 24, 1991
The complete book Reflections: Sixty Years at Our Saviour, is available for download in Adobe's PDF format. You will need the free Adobe Acrobat Reader to view it. If you do not have the Acrobat Reader installed on your computer, please follow the link below to download it.
(OSLCHistory.pdf ~ 2.33 MB)
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