Baptists Bet on the Bible in Las Vegas

The last time Fred Siegenthaler was here, as a wild kid just out of the Army and hitchhiking down the Strip in 1975 . . . well, he’ll tell you: just to say he was a hell raiser is to give hell raising too little credit.

On Saturday, he was back among the neon-and-stucco palaces of iniquity, now on a 24-hour mission from his church in Rutherford, N.J., “preaching the gospel, saving souls” with about 1,800 Southern Baptists from 38 states, who spent the day taking their faith door-to-door in the suburbs of this city.

They know what you’re thinking: what’s a nice religion like them doing in a fleshpot like this?

Along with the National Apartment Assn., the American Comedy Convention and Barry Manilow, the Southern Baptists’ convention has come to Vegas, everyone’s favorite sunny Sodom, where 18 million visitors a year render unto Caesars Palace, and where making a joyful noise means the rich chinking of silver dollars.

The Leonard-Hearns fight Monday? A trifle compared to the struggle with Satan. So even before the convention’s main events next week, some Southern Baptists like Siegenthaler hit the suburbs with a door-to-door religious survey and blue Gospel tracts, hoping to reach 96,000 households in eight hours. About 2,000 other Southern Baptists who couldn’t be here were mailed pages from the local phone book, so they could pray for each Las Vegan by name.

From a dozen local Baptist churches they issued forth in two by two Saturday morning, gooey with coconut-scented SPF 30 sun block (“We smell like Miami Beach,” sniffed Michael Daily of Miami, who knows), with a stubbornly unflappable serenity in the face of truly hellish temperatures, a large and ardent Mormon population, and a sizable number of Las Vegans whose work requires them to sleep during the day.

Want ‘Positive Experience’

Mindful of this, only ring the doorbell once, the “messengers” were told out at Redrock Baptist Church. Don’t worry about the “no soliciting signs”--you’re taking a survey, not soliciting. Be as resourceful as you can, “like you were going to be making a million dollars selling telephones,” and “be courteous and friendly. We want the people who live here to have such a positive experience they wouldn’t mind us coming back.”

That the Southern Baptists are here at all evokes some bemusement. “Frankly I’m surprised they’re here--it ain’t their kind of town,” remarked John Reible of the Chamber of Commerce’s news bureau, who has seen almost every other group turn up here.

Some Las Vegans privately expect a few Baptists to turn holy high-rollers and drop a few coins in a slot machine, maybe bend an elbow with bourbon and branch water. The church’s magazine offers some Vegas tips: “Room service charges for alcoholic beverages (and X-rated in-room movies) are readily noted by employees of the hotel industry. Room service ‘runners’ are especially aware of Baptist hypocrisy. Gambling’s a gamble. Nickel slot machines may not distinguish Baptist from Buddhist, but card dealers notice.”

So miffed are some hotels at a “non-gaming” convention, which means no lavish gambling spending, said the church’s Home Mission Board spokesman Joe Westbury, that at least one hotel quoted higher rates when Baptists identified themselves as such, and another hotel canceled reservations outright.

But you can’t be timid, said an Arizona Baptist. If the Apostle Paul had been so squeamish, “he’d never have gone to Corinth, and that was the Las Vegas of his day.”

Some Bewildered

Some Baptists may be a bit bewildered at convening in a place where taxi ads promote a ‘Nudes on Ice’ revue, but Las Vegans are a trifle huffy at being singled out for salvation.

“When we are done working . . . we like to take time out from our ‘sinning’ to sleep, rest or spend time with our families,” went one woman’s letter to a local newspaper. “Would they be going door-to-door in Billings, Montana . . . or did they choose to have their convention in ‘Sin City’ to ‘save’ this decadent town?” demanded another.

While Clark County has been classed a 10 on a 1 to 10 scale of spiritual need, and they hope to start up dozens of new churches and missions, “we do not want to single it out as having any more problems than any other city,” soothed Westbury.

Not so--it needs saving more, says Shirley Maples, who spent Saturday driving out-of-town volunteers in their door-to-door “Here’s Hope” campaign, which has been in the making for six months, and mapped out the city as meticulously as census tracts.

She has been here four years, from Eldorado, Okla., and can’t wait to leave. “I’ve seen little old ladies sit there spending their pension check, then crying and saying ‘I don’t have money for my medicine,’ as they put their last quarter in. Then you see people fighting over cans out of the garbage to get $2 to go drink or gamble.” Even in her own family, the gambling fever has bitten--one relative prays for good luck at poker, then blames God when he loses.

Door to Door

She trailed along in her car as Daily, who regretted not having tried to “witness” the man who offered to sell him some crack on the Strip the day before, joined Wanda Sunderland, whose husband Bobby is on the Home Mission Board in Atlanta. “God didn’t give us a choice--you SHALL be disciples.”

They went from door to door in north Las Vegas beneath the spotty shade of mulberry trees, in a neighborhood that looked not so much iniquitous as just not exceedingly prosperous.

At the third house, they were talking to a pregnant young woman about being saved when her mother-in-law stepped from behind the faded front door, sobbing, sharing her own story of being born again in a Mormon-Catholic marriage. “I’m saved,” she said at last, and looked at her daughter-in-law. “You go ahead and talk to Martha.”

At the fifth house, a woman in a blue smock raked twigs as her husband, his shorts baring an artificial leg, mowed the lawn and a white poodle sniffed the visitors.

Explains Belief

“I’m LDS (Mormon),” she said flatly, but answered the survey politely, accepted a tract and at last burst out: “You don’t believe God’s a person, do you?” Why yes we do, said Daily, and explained.

Multiply it by hundreds of teams, and the morning went the same: the bearded roofer with a broken heel, a cigar in one hand and a crutch in the other, admitting that he hadn’t been to church since his grandma passed on. He absently polished the brass door lock with the tract Daily had given him, and guessed he wasn’t in very good standing with God.

“I want to tell you, that man is in need of a (church) visit,” said Sunderland, making a special note on the survey card.

Front door to front door: the girl with the bird tattoo on her ankle, declining rather too groggily for 10 a.m. . . . the house where Sunderland walked up to the white Cadillac as the woman pulled in the driveway, found she was Jewish, smilingly gave her a tract anyway and told her she had a cute dog . . . and the house where the Jehovah’s Witness, socket wrench in hand, who would be out spreading his faith himself that morning if he hadn’t needed to fix the plumbing, engaged them in 20 minutes of spirited dogma tussling.

Comparing Results

By late afternoon, they were comparing results. When they caught their 4 o’clock plane back to Jersey, Fred Siegenthaler and his pastor, Dennis O’Neill, did so feeling they’d left Las Vegas a little better than they’d found it. Two pretty negative people, sure, but that’s nothing out of 40 or 50.

“We had a 14-year-old Mormon boy accept the Lord, and a couple people got real close,” exulted Siegenthaler. And one Jewish man he explained the gospel to, “tried to give the impression it wasn’t making sense, but you could see by his face that some of it was hitting a nerve.”

Beamed Guy Parker of Desha, Ark.: “One soul saved and several good contacts.”