East Range Episcopal Churches

Our name reveals much of who we were and how we came to be. Until January 2007, we were the Episcopal Churches located on the eastern end of the Mesabi Iron Range from the towns of Ely, Tower, Virginia, Eveleth, and Hoyt Lakes. These towns began as mining towns, and basically still are mining towns. Usually when a mining town ceases to be a mining town it becomes a ghost town. Mining is the economy; it is the reason people gather together and hang their houses in clusters along the edge of broad and deep pits. Some active mines have devoured towns as they grew; the towns just disappeared leaving only rough memories and records of their existence, sometimes the town moved to leave streets, sidewalks, and steps behind as sentinels in meadows. We all know that our towns could go the way of Sparta, Franklin, and Section 30. Some of our towns are hanging in suspension between mining town and ghost town. Our very existence depends on our ability to dig, crush and sell the very rock that we walk and set our houses on. If we can no longer find the rock, or if it becomes too expensive to dig it up, or if no one wants to buy it, then we all could very well become part of the dust left behind as the ore is shipped out.

Like many other mining towns we are located in a non-agricultural part of the country. Our land is not deep top soil, and we don't have warm summer corn-growing nights. We are a people of the rock, lakes, swamps and forest. The forest, like mining, has provided another kind of transient economy. The folklore, the early stories of logging and mining have much in common. Saloons and brothels were the benchmarks of the beginning towns. The towns are made up of people on the move; they were "packsackers", usually bachelors making their way through to someplace else. Often stories of the men, like Paul Bunyan and John Henry, achieved heroic stature, with feats of strength and power. The movement was western. From Michigan to Wisconsin to Minnesota and on west. Miners followed the iron ore; loggers followed the white pine. The white pine is gone, and those loggers who have stayed here now find work logging pulp wood. They are scattered about in homes sprinkled around in the woods, and they truck their wood to different industrial sites. Like mining, clear cutting leaves massive gaps of barren landscape. Like the ghost towns there are harsh reminders of what was once forest, but now almost impossible to remember. We talk about "tree harvest" the way a farmer may talk about harvesting small grain. We use the words but we know that it is not the same.

When we think of stewardship of the iron ore from the mines and the wood from forest that is entrusted to us, the language and the stories work for a sense of accountability. But if we try to think of the environmental stewardship with mining and logging, then the language and the stories of "stewardship" fall short of describing the ethical dilemma with which we must live. Can we have steel or wood products without wreaking extreme violence on the environment? Can it be put back together after we have mined or logged? We know these two things for certain: it can never be put back as it was, and we are not living "harmlessly" in our environment. The heroes of the mining and logging days are now cast in new and different light. The last question follows: are we willing or is it possible to live without a steel or wood industry?

It is the third economy of this area that accents the ethical dilemma for us. It is an economy of a wilderness based in tourism. For generations this has been a place where people from cities and farms have escaped to rest, to recreate, to be restored and to be healed. We live in Superior National Forest, along the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. We offer a life away from human intervention, and we like to call our remote places "pristine". Of course they aren't. There were generations of humans living here before us. They left us with an understanding of land and animals that makes our present notions of ownership seem almost pathological. To our ancestors, land and animals were relatives. That kind of perception is matches in modern times by a spirituality or mysticism of a relationship, which Martin Buber wrote about as the "I-Thou" relationship:
 

It takes is out of ourselves as center and manager and, like God's visitation to Job, it places us in community with all of creation. It feels profoundly good and timeless. We call it home.

Lastly, the wilderness provides a window into God's Kingdom. Like the seed growing secretly, it not only reveals a life that happens beyond our efforts, it also relates a life narrative whose major theme is one of sacrifice or "give away". "Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." Not only does this suggest an ethic of death/life in behalf of others, but it is also a narrative jam-packed with gratitude because so many have died that we may have life. The wilderness provides us with a vision of life that is truly Eucharistic.

To live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood of Creation. When we do this knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it is a sacrament. (Wendell Berry)

On January 1, 2007 at the request of St. John's Episcopal Church (Eveleth), our three congregations dissolved the covenant and went their separate ways. Although we share a common heritage and an historical relationship, we now move in our separate futures.

This was originally written by the Rev Roger Weaver, priest for these locations (June 17, 1980 to January 1, 2002) and modified by Charles Morello in January 2007 to reflect the change in status of the relationship of these churches.