GETTYSBURG, Pa. — From his
Old Testament beard down to his scuffed boots and battered Bible, Alan Farley
looks the perfect picture of a Civil War chaplain.
On a dusty field five miles
from where the Battle of Gettysburg was fought 147 years ago, Farley acts the
part as well, thundering sermons from his home-made pulpit, praying with
bedraggled soldiers, and handing out tracts with titles like “Everlasting
Punishment.”
The thousands of soldiers
and spectators at the Gettysburg Civil War Battle Re-enactment in early July
could be forgiven for swallowing the chaplain’s performance — the tracts look
aged, the religion old time.
But it is no act, says
Farley, it is a divine calling.
For 26 years, Farley has
driven thousands of miles, distributed millions of pages of tracts, and
delivered hundreds of sermons — all for one mission: bringing Civil War
re-enactors to Jesus.
“No one was reaching them,”
said the 59-year-old Virginian. “They are gone every weekend and most wouldn’t
darken the door of a church, ordinarily. But they need to get saved.”
Farley’s Re-enactor’s
Missions for Jesus Christ combines modern means with 1860s-style evangelism to
reach the estimated 50,000 Civil War enthusiasts who live to relive famous
battles like Bull Run, Antietam and Shiloh year after year.
Pitching a cross-steepled
tent beside the battlefields, Farley and a handful of volunteers in period
dress pray with re-enactors, promote a Civil War chaplains’ museum in
Lynchburg, Va., and preach as often as event organizers will allow. Farley
estimates that 1,800 re-enactors have been led to Christianity through his
ministry.
RNS photo courtesy Alan Farley Alan Farley, a Civil War re-enactor preacher, brings a very contemporary gospel message to battlefield re-enactments. |
One day, he hopes, he’ll see
an evangelical revival like those that blazed through Confederate camps during
the Civil War.
In some ways, Farley and his
family are typical Christian missionaries, albeit with an unusual mission
field. They live in Appomattox, Va., where Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses
S. Grant in 1865. But the Farleys spend 40 weeks a year away from home,
crisscrossing the country in
an RV that carries Alan and his wife, Faith, to scores of Civil War
re-enactments and events. Often their 20-something children — both re-enactors —
come along.
Fifteen churches support the
Farleys through their monthly mission budgets. “Just like missionaries going to
Africa, or Ireland, or wherever,” Farley said. Farley was ordained by an
independent Baptist church in 1994, at, of course, a Civil War re-enactment.
While many fellow
re-enactors adopt a specific historical persona, Farley does not.
“I feel very strongly that
if I portrayed somebody, and somebody realized I was not that person, they
might think the message or gospel I’m trying to share with them is also phony,”
he said.
Re-enactors spend countless
hours learning to dress, shoot, and speak like Civil War soldiers. But for all
their historical high-mindedness and fastidious attention to period detail,
re-enactments can be bawdy affairs, with modern-day enthusiasts assuming the
role of dissolute soldiers on the eve of bloody battles. Then as now, drink and
gambling are the biggest vices.
At a re-enactment two
decades ago in North Carolina, where Farley was playing a Confederate soldier,
he read the Bible in his tent as the moon rose. It was the Book of Ezekiel,
where God warns that those who do not dissuade backsliders will be held
accountable.
“I said, ‘Lord, are you
speaking to me about these re-enactors?”’ Farley recalled. “And the Lord said, ‘Look
at them singing and carrying on around the campfire. My son died for them and
no one is coming to them. If you go, I’ll give you the strength.’ From then on,
my burden was for the re-enactors.”
Since re-enactments are
often held on isolated farms, getting to church on Sunday and back by
battle-time can be nearly impossible. Farley resolved to bring church to the
men. He began with 15-minute sermons held in the shade of an oak tree between
battles. At the recent Gettysburg re-enactment, Farley led two services packed
with hundreds of soldiers and spectators in a tent beside the battlefield.
That’s where Williams
Collins of Portland, Ind., heard him on July 4, just hours before he rushed
into battle as the Color Sergeant in Pickett’s Charge. Three years ago, Collins
said, Farley saved his life — eternal and temporal.
“I was going down the wrong road.
He brought me back and gave me a new outlook,” he said.
Not everyone appreciates his
ministry, Farley admits. Some chaplain re-enactors, turned off by his
evangelism, turn tail when they see him coming. Some spectators and re-enactors
turn up at his 1860s-style worship services expecting a show, only to find real
conviction.
Farley’s preaching blends
past and present — he keeps 200 period sermons in boxes in the RV — but they
leave no room for middle ground: you are saved, or you are not. Each service
closes with an altar call.
“It’s the same message men
150 years ago were preaching,” he said. “That never changes.”
The preacher has no patience
for chaplain re-enactors who dress the part but lack the passion.
“I run across men out here
who portray chaplains and have the mannerisms and the dress of a Civil War
chaplain down to a ‘t,”’ Farley said. “But when they preached I realized they
were not genuine. They were just reading a sermon that someone else preached.”