Activity: White Cross
As of 2024, MaryAnn Burnes heads the White Cross group. She delights in matching backing fabrics with the intricate and eye-popping designs on the front of quilts, which women of the congregation sew at home. Church members donate scraps of fabric for the quilts as well as old sheets to be torn into bandages. When I first met MaryAnn in 2012, she was wearing a red, white, and blue striped apron over her long jean skirt and pink blouse. Affixed to the apron was a cloth name tag that read “MaryAnn” in elegant black script. MaryAnn and most of the women in White Cross are over 60 and no longer work outside the home. White Cross has plastic boxes full of yarn and stacks of fabric that they use to finish quilts; because the work takes hours, most of it is done at home. Women deliberate with each other over which colors of yarn and fabric go together well and how tightly one should wind a bandage, while they simultaneously discuss upcoming travel plans, as well as weddings, births, illnesses, neighborhood happenings, church politics, and events at Bethlehem. The women listen to one another, trade stories, and offer advice—not only about quilts but also about one another’s lives and the common challenges faced.
One woman, “Jean,” took me under her wing during this 2012 visit and taught me how to tie a quilt— the process that connects the back, batting, and front of the quilt with yarn so that the batting does not crumple inside the case of the quilt. Talking over a quilt with squares cut from a bolt of fabric prominently featuring Snoopy and his friends, Jean explained to me that she came to Bethlehem Baptist three years earlier from a smaller Lutheran church, which had, in her opinion, stopped preaching the Bible and “gone off track.” Jean came to Bethlehem because she believes that Bethlehem does a far better job of sticking to the Bible and God’s message. Citing an example to illustrate her point, Jean noted attitudes toward homosexuality. Her Lutheran church had condoned homosexuality and she felt uncomfortable with the church’s approval of a practice that she believes the Bible explicitly condemns as a sin. She also likes that at Bethlehem she can be anonymous and simply be one face in a crowd. She explained that she liked being able to slip in and slip out of a service whenever she wanted.
