Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1921-02-01
A SUNDAY IN ZION
Everybody in City Spends Whole Day
In Church.

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In Church.
Next to sitting up at wake, the
least exciting experience eXtant is to
spend Sunday in the bluest of the blue
law towns-Zion City, relates a Zion
City, Ill.,. dispatch.
Having a good time is one thing;
Sunday in Zion City is another.
It's this way:
The city's population of six thous-
and arises and dresses with alacrity-
and nothing else but-at $50 a. m. A
mad scramble across the f1fty-eight
hundred dreary acres of Zion City
brings the town to Shiloh tabernacle.
The Rev. Wilbur Glenn Voliva starts
the service when the gong sounds at
$50 and the city Of Zion Is seated
Woe betide the sleepy brother who
has not kept his rendezvous with the
blue laws!
Voliva breaches for one solid and
somber hour He stops. You nudge
your pew-mate-not 4 suspender
wearing and bewhiskered brother, but
the kind Of a man you meet in yo':r
own church-and ask il church Is
over.
Black looks, aplenty are given, but
no answer.
A hymn is expected to liven things
up bit. But not so. Others of the
ten ministers sitting on the platform
follow with their austre messages and
the first service Of blue Sunday con-
cludes at o'clock. The city of Zion,
after sitting for two and one-half
hours, arises and hurries home.
| The advent of a 3-minute prayer
service about the family alters is ush-
cred In by gong at $50. At 10 the
tabernacle is again filed. Eight SER
mons, four prayers and three hymns
another two and one-half hours.
You find you have only been through
the preliminary routine OF blue Sun
day. The real service starts at $50
o'clock in the afternoon with hymn
sung by the choir Of six hundred.
clothed in flowing white robes and
accompanied by the mammoth pipe
organ.
Sober sermons by ten ministers,
clothed in black gowns. follow. Over
seer Voliva then breaches the sermon
of the day You don't watch the
oto 10 ri
arises, sings a hymn and walks out at
$50, retreatlng homeward.
The lights are dimmed in the great
tabernacle. Surely church must be
over in the strictest city in America.
But, it isn't-services in eight various
parts of Zion start at 7.30 and last
until 10.
Then the city sleeps.
Wilbur Glenn Voliva Is a stout and
somewhat handsome man of 81. The
man who succeeded to the dictatorship
of Zion upon the death Of it's founder
John Alexander Dowie, is student
and scholar and talks Of politics,
literature and world relations with
the same ease as he quotes the Bible
He is monarch of all he surveys, he
says, as he owns the entire city and
the Industries therein.
Voliva said he does not copntenance
the following things on blue Sunday:
Pursuit Of pleasure or business of any
kind; reading Of newspapers; work Of
any kind with the possible exception
of preparation OF meager meals; use
of motor cars except to and from
church. He permits and demands the
following: Prayer, going 10 church
and reading the Bible.
This sign at the entrance of the city
greets the visitor:
THE use OF intoxicating liquor, to-
bacco, profanity and vulsarity are for
biddcn in Zion-only the clean may
enter here
After submitting to the bluest of the
blue lays all day, the visitor strolled
to the railroad station-the only bright
spot in town.
Four chic girls and four snappy
young men were paired off, talking,
laughing, signing and looking longing
ly into each others eyes as they were
chaperoncd by the station master in
blue denim. They had been \. w. o.
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