(This story was inspired by an announcement in a recent church newsletter of an upcoming discussion of a book about “dangerous religious ideas.” Immediately following that paragraph was an invitation to the congregation to enter a chili cook-off, to be held a few weeks later. It seemed that those two things were just destined to have something in common.)

You don’t normally expect to see two police cars, an ambulance, and three fire trucks in the church parking lot at 1:30 on Sunday afternoon, but that was the scene at the Mount Moriah Church of Praise and Blessings’ annual chili cook-off, never mind that Agnes Graves had been warning of trouble for weeks.

“I’m telling you, this is going to be a disaster,” she said to Marcy Williams after church the week before the event. “Didn’t I say letting just anyone enter the cook-off is a bad idea?”

“Yes you did, but Sue Ellen isn’t just anyone, you know,” Marcy replied, trying to mollify Agnes. “She is a deacon, after all, and we talked about this. Gordon said the committee agreed.”

“Yes, but she and the others are women. It’s just never been done.” Agnes could sometimes be unrelenting in her opinions and this was one of those times.

Traditions prevail and things change slowly in the town of Mount Moriah, population 1988. “Biggest Little City Between Topeka and Wichita. Home of the State Champion Prairie Dogs” the sign along Highway 75 proclaimed, though like many things in the community, it hadn’t been accurate since the 1960 Census, and Mount Moriah wasn’t precisely between Topeka and Wichita.

The chili cook-off had been the domain of the men of the church since the first year of the competition, also 1960, and that, coincidentally, was the year of “the touchdown,” as it was known locally; the year Jimmy Graves, Agnes’ father, was responsible for the only score in the Class 1A state football championship game, the game that was not really noted for being a defensive battle, as might be guessed, but for the torrential rain that turned the field into a muddy bog and then, at halftime, a freak twenty-five degree drop in temperature produced six inches of thunder snow within minutes. The officials were pretty sure that Jimmy scored on the final play of the game, but the goal line was completely obscured and the coach from Bird City didn’t dispute the call since most of his players had already run to the dressing room, drenched and frozen. That was the last time the Prairie Dogs came anywhere close to a state championship, but the sign stayed, a reminder of what had been and what might yet be.

The church had celebrated the victory along with the rest of the town and had begun the cook-off to raise funds to help pay Jimmy’s tuition to Kansas State University. The school had seemingly not recognized what tremendous potential he had on the gridiron and failed to offer him a scholarship. Jimmy wasn’t at all disappointed because he never really liked football that much and certainly didn’t relish the thought of playing in any more snowstorms. His great love was English literature; or rather, it was Mary Hopkins, the girl who sat in front of him in English class. Mary was headed to K-State and Jimmy followed her like the proverbial love-sick puppy. Four years later, they both graduated and tied the knot back in Mount Moriah First Lutheran Church, as it was then known. Agnes joined the family soon after. Well, not that soon, it being the early ‘60s in rural Kansas.

The chili cook-off was one of a half dozen fund-raisers held by the church each year which helped finance its ecclesiastical projects, like new choir robes (1978); hymnals (1989); repairs to the bell tower and roof (2004); and, a second urinal in the men’s restroom (2007; many of the male members of the congregation were getting up in years and urinary issues were frequent). This year’s event was to pay for a laptop for Rev. Joshua Paisley and a new sound system for the Fellowship Hall. Ralph Donner had negotiated a good deal from a technology company in Overland Park and an anonymous donor from the congregation agreed to pay half if the chili cook-off brought in the other half. No one doubted it would, except perhaps, Agnes Graves.

The first stirrings of trouble, as Agnes predicted, had started two months earlier when Rev. Paisley began a Wednesday Luncheon Club discussion of Dr. Cecelia Paterson’s book “Women of the New Testament: The Real Disciples.” Rev. Paisley had arranged to discuss the book with the author over Zoom, a somewhat novel event, and it took several of the Luncheon Club participants a bit to figure out the concept.

“Ladies, next week, when you come to the church, we’ll have a big TV set up in the Fellowship Hall and we’ll be able to talk to Dr. Paterson who will be in her office back at Duke University,” Rev. Paisley explained. “Lunch afterward will be pot luck, of course.”

“So Dr. Paterson will be joining us for lunch?” Gladys Wright asked.

“No, she’s going to be in North Carolina. But I’ll ask her if she wants to stay after her presentation and join our discussion during lunch.”

“I though you said she’s in North Carolina,” Gladys said, getting more confused.

“Yes, she’s there, but I meant that maybe she’ll have her lunch there and we can carry on the conversation with her from here.”

Gladys glanced at Philomena Mays with a look that said, “Do you understand what we are going to do?”

Philomena replied with a look that said, “It’s okay, dear. Take a sip of your tea.”

The Zoom meeting managed to go off without a hitch, but Dr. Paterson’s book caused quite a stir among the Luncheon Club members, given that the premise of the book was that the twelve Disciples named in the Bible were merely male hangers-on and that Jesus’ closest and most faithful followers were actually women. Most of the “miracles” attributed to Jesus were simply acts that resulted from the women always being prepared and skilled in everyday tasks. Turning water into wine? A slight-of-hand facilitated by Disciple Sarah usually having bottles of the recent fruits of her vines with her. Feeding the multitude? The women knew there was a crowd whenever Jesus spoke, so they let it be known there would be a picnic that day and that those attending should come prepared for “lunch on the grounds.” Of course, a few hadn’t gotten the word and came empty-handed, so Disciple Grace and Disciple Miriam collected enough extra “loaves and fishes” among the crowd to feed those who came without any food. Maybe fifty people, but certainly not five thousand as it was recorded in Matthew.

“Whoever wrote that exaggerated just a tad,” Dr. Paterson suggested.

“But what about raising Lazarus from the dead?” Julie Jefferson asked. “How did they do that?”

“They administered Hammoniacus sal to Lazarus. You know, what we call smelling salts. Disciple Esther had seen him faint the day before at the market and had guessed that he might do the same thing when he encountered Jesus,” Dr. Paterson explained. “She was prepared for Jesus to perform another miracle.”

“I thought his body had been put in a tomb,” Bernice Matthews said.

“Translation error. ‘Room’ became ‘tomb’ because several of King James’ folks were notoriously near sighted,” Dr. Paterson replied, trying hard to suppress a chuckle. “Jesus and the women were walking down his street and when Lazarus saw them, he collapse from the excitement. They carried him back into his house and put him in his front room. Whoever wrote John was being a bit dramatic, don’t you think?”

When the Zoom session ended and goodbyes were said to Dr. Paterson, who had another obligation and couldn’t join them for lunch, everyone filled their plates and further discussion of the book was put on hold while they ate. When they were finished, Sue Ellen was sitting lost in thought, looking rather pensive. Finally, she said, “You know, I don’t think we give enough credit to Eve for what she did when she picked that apple and gave it to Adam. She seemed to intuitively understand that knowledge is useless if it isn’t shared. If she hadn’t done that, we’d all still be ignorant and naked.”

A slight gasp came from the kitchen, where Gladys had taken the empty dishes, followed by a bit of giggling from the table where Bernice and Holly Norman had been deep in discussion until that moment.

Philomena give them the look she used to give her third graders when they were acting up, and said to Sue Ellen, “I understand what you mean, but you do realize you are in a church. That sort of talk is not appropriate.”

“What? You mean the word ‘naked’?” Sue Ellen asked. “I sort of remember Jesus saying something about folks being naked and hungry.”

“Well, yes, but…” Philomena began.

Sue Ellen cut her off. “I’m just pointing out another instance when a woman made a decision and it turned out to be positive for all of us. And on that note, I’ve made a decision, too. I’m going to enter the chili cook-off.”

Another gasp came from the kitchen, followed by the sound of dishes clattering to the floor. Fortunately, everything the church had used since the 1960s was Melamine, so nothing was broken.

“Sue Ellen, are you serious? I don’t think the men will like that,” Bernice said.

“Hang the men. We all know that most of the wives cook the chili for them anyway, so what does it matter if I cut out the middle man, so to speak, and just enter myself. When Stan was alive, the only thing he did was pull an onion out of the garden for me now and then, and then plug the crockpot in when he got to church. I was the one who cooked the chili.”

Stan, Sue Ellen’s husband of thirty-five years, had passed away the year before. “He” had won the competition several times with Sue Ellen’s recipe and effort, but she never spilled the beans. He always laughed when she said that in the truck on the way home from church. He always laughed at her jokes. He was reliable that way. She missed that about him.

“Well, if you are really going to enter this year, so am I,” Holly declared. “Josh, what do you think?”

Rev. Paisley had been busying himself putting up the electronic equipment and hadn’t really been paying attention. He had learned that it was safer for him if the just tuned out the conversations after the program at the Wednesday Lunch Club gathering. Getting drawn into a discussion about the proper way to prune roses or prepare lasagna was fraught with danger.

“Yes, Joshua, what do you think?” Philomena always called him Joshua and when she did, he decided it was time to listen.

“I’m sorry, I kind of missed part of the discussion. What was the question?”

“What do you think about women entering the chili cook-off?” Sue Ellen had walked over to where he was winding an extension cord around his arm and she stood just a tiny bit in his personal space. Startled, he took a half step back and bumped into the table his old Dell computer was sitting on, the one that was going to be replaced with the proceeds of this year’s competition.

“I, um, um, I, I…” he stuttered. “I wonder if it wouldn’t be a good idea to have a chat with Gordon about this. He’s the chair of the cook-off committee, after all.”

“That’s a good idea,” Philomena said. “I’ll give him a call right now.”

Gordon was Philomena’s husband. Gordon was one of the few men who actually cooked chili themselves. He’d been doing it for forty years, the entirely of the time that he and Philomena had been married.

“Gordon, sweetie, Sue Ellen wants to enter the chili cook-off. That would be alright wouldn’t it?” Philomena had put her phone on speaker so everyone could hear and she had a way of phrasing questions that a politician would be proud of: “Now tell us, when did you stop beating your wife?” No matter how you answered it, you were in hot water.

So Gordon could say “yes” and have to face up to the other men on the committee who might not be happy about his unilateral decision, or he could say “no” to Philomena and face up to, god knows what, when he got home. It was an easy decision.

“Of course she can enter. That would be just fine. Good to have some new blood in the competition.”

“That’s just what I thought you would say. You are a dear. See you later,” Philomena said hanging up and turning to the others with a smile.

“Well, I guess that settles it,” Josh said, backing up to the door to the sanctuary, and adding over his shoulder as he turned to leave, “Great discussion today, ladies. Thank you all. See you at choir practice tonight.”

---

The Chili Cook-off was always held on the first Sunday in June. By that time, high school graduation had been held, Memorial Day was well over, most spring planting was done, and vacations had not yet gotten under way. It was the last Sunday for the choir, which always took a summer break, and the short church service was mostly given over to music so the cook-off participants would have time for last minute preparations.

Over the years, the cook-off had changed a bit, depending on who was entering. Always the men of course. That hadn’t changed.

In the first fews years, the chili was made with local beef processed at Moriah Meat Locker and the recipes were pretty basic: meat, beans, tomatoes and spices. When Hank Wilson and his family moved from Texas in the early ‘70s, he convinced the committee that no self-respecting chili would have beans in it.

“We just don’t do that where I come from,” he would say when the committee met to plan the event. Hank had a big Texas personality, so the committee went along with his suggestion and for a decade, that was that, but when Hank was called back to his old job at Texas Instruments in 1982, beans returned to the chili.

There were no major changes to the competition for several years until the major scandal in 2004, the year that Jerry Norris secretly substituted tofu for beef and won the cook-off. Everyone in the congregation was horrified that they could be deceived like that, despite the fact that everyone loved the chili, and Jerry was banned from the competition for a year. There are some things you simply don’t do, tofu in chili being one of them.

The day of the cook-off, Rev. Paisley opened the doors of the Fellowship Hall at 8:00 and the entrants streamed in to find just the right spot on the tables arrayed around the perimeter of the room. In the past, the men had brought big pots with Sterno warmers underneath, but a few had lately switched to large electric servers which necessitated their being close to the scarce outlets around the room.

In the center of the spacious Hall, were round tables for people to sit and eat and gossip, three things members of the church were well-practiced in. At precisely 11:30, the benediction was said in the sanctuary and after the usual round of returning hymnals to the racks on the backs of the pews and greeting the visitor, people began moving to the Fellowship Hall, deliberately, but also trying to appear not to hurry. The aroma wafting in from the Hall made tastebuds explode; people had been anticipating this for weeks.

While everyone in the congregation, and most people in the town, had heard that women were going to be competing this year, it was still jarring for some to see that nearly all those offering their spicy concoctions were not men, as had been the normal scene in the past. In fact, only three men were among the fifteen chili purveyors.

“Well, this is not what I was expecting at all,” Alice Robertson exclaimed. “I knew that Sue Ellen and Holly were going to entering, but Doris and Grace and Sandy and, and…”

She seemed to run out of breathe naming names, and finally just looked around the room in awe.

“This is certainly a surprise, but I think it’s wonderful. Maybe we’ll get to sample some new recipes this year,” Elsie Davis, the food critic for the Lyon County Ledger, said to Alice. Elsie fancied herself a gourmand, having traveled a few times to Chicago and once to London, cities not especially known for their cuisine, though. “Frankly, the same old thing every year was getting a bit boring.”

“Be prepared to be surprised, Elsie,” Sue Ellen said as she buzzed by on the way to her bubbling pot of chili.

Surprised would be the least of the emotions on display in just a short time, actually.

“Dear friends, may I have your attention,” Rev. Paisley began. “We want to thank everyone who decided to enter the chili cook-off this year, especially since it is somewhat of a break with tradition. I know that you are all excited to sample some new creations, but first, let’s bow our heads in prayer.”

One of the things that the congregation had always appreciated about Rev. Paisley was his brevity in exhorting God, no matter the situation, so his prayers tended to be one or two sentences, at most. It was one of the things he had truly taken to heart in seminary when his mentor, the Reverend Dr. Herschel Owens, said that the congregation hears the spoken words and God hears the unspoken ones, so it wasn’t necessary for the congregation to hear the whole book of Psalms in a prayer. “Short and sweet and everyone will be happy, man and God,” Dr. Owens told his students often.

With that announcement, people began circulating around the Hall, sampling the offerings and marking tallies on the cards that had been handed out at the door, a system of voting for the winner of the competition, collected at the end of the sampling period. Donations were also collected in jars next to each entry. It was an unwritten rule that a donation was expected each time someone sampled a bowl of chili, but some people were known to sample several times without donating. No one objected. Even these multitudes were fed free of charge.

At 1:00, Gordon Mays, chair of the committee, announced that the chili cook-off competition was officially closed and that everyone should turn in their tally cards. Rev. Paisley had just begun collecting the cards when raised voices were heard from the south end of the Fellowship Hall.

“Lyle, we’ve always known that you didn’t cook your own chili. It’s been an open secret, but letting you wife enter on her own this year is just too much.” Herb Wagner was standing about three inches from Lyle Gardner’s face, which was turning redder by the second, nearly matching the color of his wife Nancy’s pot of chili.

“Now wait just a minute, Herb. Nancy had every right to enter on her own. I’m happy that so-called secret is really out in the open. And be honest: you’ve never cooked a bowl of chili in your life. Your wife has been doing that for you just like mine has.” Lyle was breathing heavily and looked like he might explode.

“Yes, but Greta’s chili is actually good. Your wife’s chili tastes like hog slop,” Herb responded, going a bit overboard with his criticism.

Before Rev. Paisley could traverse the twenty-five feet from the north end of the hall to the south to calm what appeared to be a quickly-escalating argument, Lyle started poking Herb’s chest with his index finger and in retaliation, Herb pushed Lyle with both hand, sending him stumbling backwards into a table on which sat three pots of hot chili. The table tipped precariously for just an instant and the pots tumbled to the floor, splashing beans and meat and tomato sauce all over the new drapes that had been installed just the week before to cover the view of the trash receptacles outside the building.

Two of the pots had been plugged into an electric outlet, but the third had a can of Sterno flaming away underneath, heating the pot’s contents. When the Sterno can hit the floor, the contents splashed onto the curtains and a small flame began to appear.

Agnes Graves had just been wiping down the tables with a kitchen towel and bucket of water and when she saw what was happening, she rushed over to throw the water on the flames. The puddles of chili had spread underneath the table, which had fallen on its side, and like Buster Keaton in one of his silent movies, Agnes slipped in the chili and, seemingly in slow motion, hit the floor with a thud. The sound of her coming into contact with the linoleum tiles was bad enough, but everyone in the Hall heard her hip fracture with a terrible, sharp crack.

“Someone call 911,” Sue Ellen yelled when she saw Agnes fall. “Lyle, grab the fire extinguisher.”

The drapes were smoldering, producing a small cloud of smoke but no real flames. The flame-retardant material that Doris Arnold had purchased to make the drapes really was. Lyle, regaining his balance and his composure, grabbed the fire extinguisher from the kitchen and began spraying the drapes, which created even more smoke.

“Open the windows,” Gordon yelled, coughing through the smoke.

Sue Ellen and several of the other congregants rushed to attend to Agnes, keeping her from trying to move even though she was lying in a puddle of chili. In less than two minutes, the fire department arrived and began moving people out of the hall. The EMTs on board the fire truck attended to Agnes and within another couple of minutes, an ambulance pulled up into the church parking lot, followed by the two police cars.

The EMTs made Agnes comfortable while several firefighters assessed the damage and determined that there was no longer an active fire. The drapes were pulled down and carried outside as a precaution, though, and as soon as Agnes was transferred to the ambulance, people were allowed back in the Hall where the police officers began questioning them about what had happened.

The scene that greeted them was at once tragic and comic. Tracks of chili led from the spot Agnes had fallen to the back door of the Hall where the emergency services folks had come from. The windows at the back of the Hall, now bare and open, looked out on the trash bins, with a few people standing around outside trying to make sense of what had happened.

And from the open windows, everyone could very clearly hear a weak voice say, “I told you letting just anyone enter the cook-off was a bad idea.”