We Have to Do Something: St. Mary’s Holy Dormition Orthodox Church at the 2021 El Paso County Fair

By: Fr. Stephen Osburn, Rector of St. Mary’s Holy Dormition, Calhan, CO | August 4th, 2021

Christ is in our Midst! He is and always shall be!

In 1905, many throughout the Eastern Plains of Colorado came by wagon, surreys, foot, and horseback to gather for the first county fair held in Calhan’s schoolyard. The celebration was simple at first: To thank God for the bountiful potato harvest through fellowship and thanksgiving. Yet, little by little the El Paso County Fair grew from this humble gathering, surviving through a depression, many recessions, monsoons, blizzards, and a world wide pandemic to becoming one of the biggest fairs in the state and throughout the USA.

The week of July 10th-17th, 2021 marked the 116th birthday of the El Paso County Fair and the first time that St. Mary’s Holy Dormition in Calhan had “a real mission presence” at the fair. In the past, St. Mary’s would sell hamburgers as a way to fundraise. However, in the early 2000s with the introduction of their famous Slavic Festival, held every year on the 2nd weekend of October (Shameless plug time: Don’t forget to join us this year for the return of said Slavic Fest on October 9-10, 2021: https://holydormition.net/slavic-fest/), there was really no need to keep participating at the county fair in this manner.

Now that isn’t to say that the parish simply stopped participating. On the contrary, one aspect of Calhan that makes it stand out from other communities, both Orthodox and non-Orthodox is that everyone takes care of one another and is very much involved in everyone’s lives (in a good way, I promise). In that they did’t just go away and do “their own thing”, instead were still volunteering at the fair in 4H, other fair booths, and wherever else needed. Most of the community took to sharing the Gospel in a way they lived rather than using words, to quote a Catholic saint.

Well at one period of time, that was enough. But no longer. We live in a time where anti-theism is alive and well, even in a small farming community. Sexual deviancy, corporate consumption, affirmation of made up identities, worship of self, and the like all are seen as a “good and moral” way of living. Just this year, at Calhan’s high school graduation, a female student graduated as a “man” and was introduced with a male name and he/him pronouns. The saving work of Christ, calling us to repentance and denial of self was seen as antithetical to the new way of living. The student was celebrated and classmates were told they would not be allowed to graduate if they did not encourage this kind of behavior. The real transition displayed in our world as anti-Christian, anti-theist, and anti-human had made its way to a fairly Christian town, where the majority are of 3 major faiths: Orthodox, Catholic, and Lutheran, and a few independent protestant groups. If you were not with this student, you were against the greater good of society.

The draw of Calhan and the Eastern Plains has always been a separation from society. The perfect community where the world’s problems don’t impact the culture and people just focus on their farms/ranches, families, and churches. They live for each other and their community. One of my parishioners, Linda Hendrix who grew up in Calhan shares what it is like growing up here:

“I was born in the middle of the 20th century, growing up in a community of many Slovaks, who were Orthodox, Roman Catholic, or Lutheran. I started school at Ramah in 1955 and there were only 3 students in my class. By my third grade year, there were 52 students in the entire school. Of the 25 who had Slovak ancestry, 14 of us were Orthodox. We were a majority! We got along well because of our religion. If there ever were prejudices, it was usually because of ethnicity and the times. In 4th grade, the Ramah school merged with either Calhan or Simla and my class at Calhan grew to 24. Of the amount of us that were in the new school, only 3 of us were Orthodox. Kids made fun of us because we worshiped “weird”. I always though to myself, why they didn’t just come and see for themselves what my church was all about and not go on what the TV or others told them. Though, it was easier for me than it is for my children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Non-belief has become a majority now and it is more challenging now than ever to keep people of all ages in the faith, especially our young ones. My own grandchild recently told me she was bullied for having a belief in Jesus Christ and she was a called a bigot and hate monger for it. What’s worse is it was by someone whose family grew up with us. Why must we content with this? We have to do something.”

And something we did.

Now of course, this story by Linda and the one student “coming out” at graduation is not the breaking point by any means. That point was broken decades ago, even if Calhan has a sort of “we are 50 years behind the times” mantra. So what have we done to begin to counter act this horrid sentiment that has plagued our humble community?

We started where we thought we could do the most good: participating in our annual county fair. As stated above, the El Paso County Fair has evolved into a much bigger fair than it was originally in 1905 and over 50,000 people attend it every year. With the help of the wonderful community, Fr. Anthony Karbo, and Holy Theophany Orthodox Church in Colorado Springs we setup their mobile chapel and allowed people to see what our Orthodox Faith was all about. We handed out many brochures, had wonderful, fruitful conversations throughout the week (including conversations with a former abortion doctor turned pro life advocate {a story for another time}, a couple where one was a “trans-man”, a number of atheists and agnostics, a few mormons – who turned one of them is related to Mat. Lindsey {no surprise if you know her}, and many Catholics and Protestants), made some great new friends, and won an award for “Best Use of Space”. Every visitor had a chance to go into our chapel, hear some Orthodox chant, light a candle free of charge (though we did ask for a donation, but every penny was given to the Eastern Plains Food Pantry in order to drive the point home), and spend some time in prayer. The County Board loved our booth so much they said, “whatever it takes, be here next year”.

So did we make a difference? Who knows? Only God and time can tell. However, like the Parable of the Sower, we sowed the seed of Orthodoxy indiscriminately. We shared our faith in a world obsessed with the contrary. We gave them a little taste of who we were. We encouraged them to pray, spoke with them, cried with them, gave them something real. We didn’t just tell them “come and see our parish”. We weren’t out to just grow our parish. One thing I did not mention earlier was that the majority of the people who attend this fair are live in Colorado Springs, Denver, and Pueblo. We were there to share Orthodoxy. To be the Church. To give them something real and authentic. Most importantly, present them with Jesus Christ so they could see that in this broken world, there was hope, repentance, and communion with God. This mobile chapel was just the first step and a small taste of our faith in our community. Lord willing, it will grow and we will see those seeds blossom into many and all rejoicing in the Kingdom of God.