One nation two worlds

CHARLESTOWN -- "Low in the grave He lay, Jesus my savior!

"Up from the grave He arose, with a mighty triumph o'er his foes. He arose!"

The voices of the congregation -- men, women and fidgety children -- fill the stone church on a warm spring morning. Sunlight splashes through seven narrow windows. Dandelions bloom at the door.

"Raise the roof now," urges the tall gangly man at the pulpit.

Big-voiced and big-boned, the Rev. Roland Mars -- Rollie to his friends -- reminds the Narragansett Indians in their Sunday best that "Christianity is not just a word.

"It is a process whereby we are changed. It is a change so much needed today in our families, our tribe, our country."

The third-generation, born-again preacher mixes Puritan jeremiads with haunting memories of an older tribe, a people who decades ago met on the church grounds in humid August for a four-day powwow that ended with a cold swim in the ocean.

"Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could have family cookouts on these grounds? And we could rediscover each other?"

It's a familiar Narragansett plea: a call for unity and change, and at the same time, a reminder not to abandon the tribal past.

The fact that it comes from a Christian preacher isn't as odd as it might seem; although the Narragansetts resisted the early Puritan ministers, many embraced Christianity in the mid-1700s, during a religious revival that swept New England.

Mars, in fact, can trace his family back to Samuel Niles, the founder and first pastor of the Narragansett Indian Church. Unschooled but eloquent, baptized by the English but ordained by the Indians, the charismatic preacher led a congregation deep in the Charlestown woods.

"He was quite a man," says Mars.

The self-effacing Mars, 64, makes no such claims for himself.

He is, he says, a simple country preacher who drives tribal members to the Four Winds Medical Center or meal site on Route 2. Pastor of the First Church of God in Peace Dale, he preaches part time at the Indian church, less than a mile from his house in the woods.

"I'm just a guy who's available," he says.

HE'S ALSO part of a line of evangelical preachers with a love of Christ, the Indian past -- and the open road.

His grandfather, the prophetically named Christian S. Mars, or White Buffalo, traveled widely, demonstrating Indian customs and spreading the word of God.

His father, Harold Mars, earned $5 a week in the 1940s preaching at churches in Providence, Wakefield and Peace Dale. In 1951, the evangelist moved his family to Rochester, N.Y., where he led a congregation for 11 years.

Every summer, however, the Mars family returned to Charlestown for the August powwow. During tribal ceremonies, Harold smoked a pipe. But on Sunday, he preached a Christian service at the Narragansett church, where he later served as pastor for nearly a decade.

His three sons, Roland, David and Harold Jr., were not eager to follow their father into the ministry.

Roland, a star athlete at South Kingstown High School, went to Michigan State in 1958 on a football scholarship. But the distant college was too big a leap for the rural Indian.

He got into academic trouble and joined the Air Force.

"I had that bird feeling -- that urge to fly," he says. "It was a time for new endeavors. I was a man."

Stationed in the Deep South, the dark-skinned Mars was barred from going to the beach. Once when he tried to enter a McDonald's, a manager shouted, "No, you can't come here, boy."

Eventually, he returned to Wakefield, became a mailman, and married.

Mars won't talk much about his return to Christianity, except to say that he "got the call" one day as he walked in the woods near the Narragansett church.

"I came from behind," says Mars, who was ordained at 40.

TRIBAL LEADERS don't know how many Narragansetts are Christians; many attend non-Indian churches in South Kingstown, Westerly, Providence, and elsewhere.

Many tribal members, such as Medicine Man Lloyd Wilcox, prefer the traditional beliefs of their ancestors. Christianity, he says, "came over on a ship."

But, he adds, "the tribe has considerable diversity -- as does any group."

In fact, the tribe's constitution requires both a medicine man and a Christian preacher. "The Prophet is our spiritual adviser," it says, "to see that our tribal meetings are conducted in an upright Christian spiritual way."

That mix of Christian and Indian religion can be seen in the church itself. Rising from a grassy knoll at the end of gravel-and-dust Old Sawmill Road, it is yards away from the circle where the medicine man performs ancient rites. Wooden crucifixes adorn the stark white walls alongside feathers and animal skins. In the summer, both Christian and traditional ceremonies are held inside.

Because of that, Mars doesn't consider it a true church; unlike his father, he is not the tribe's Prophet.

BUT HE DOES consider himself a missionary, and he worries about the church, the tribe, and the souls of the Narragansetts.

In recent decades, attendance has dwindled, sometimes to as few as a dozen people at a service. That means financial support has also dwindled, says Alberta Wilcox, director of the church board and the wife of the medicine man. She pays the fire insurance from her own pocket.

Many younger Indians have drifted away from the church, Mars says. "The spirit of the world right now is, do what you please."

Also, some Indians hate Christianity because it came with a price. Colonial preachers insisted Indians renounce their culture.

"They came with a Bible in one hand and a gun in the other," he says.

Like the medicine man, Mars has no immediate successor. None of his four children wants to preach.

But recently, he got some good news: a nephew, Greg, is interested in the Indian ministry.

He got the call at a Billy Graham concert and now he can't shake the message, says Mars. "If Greg takes up the call, he will carry on."