One Pot Dinner, Marjorie Orewiler

Yet another quick recipe and quick post… I have some fun stuff in the works behind-the-scenes so please bear with me. I picked up the 1994 “Brentwood Foursquare Gospel Church” cookbook because I don’t do very many recipes from P.G. County even though I grew up there. 

The recipe was contributed by Marjorie Elton Orewiler. Marjorie and her husband served as pastors of the Foursquare Gospel Church in Maryland, Maine, Pennsylvania and her home state of Ohio, where they returned upon retiring.

The Orewilers in the News-Journal, Mansfield, Ohio, 1997

I was unfamiliar with the “Foursquare Gospel” denomination, and researching it sent me down a rabbit-hole of history that is hard to summarize here.

The church was founded in 1923 by the charismatic and controversial Aimee Semple McPherson, a Canadian-American evangelist who pioneered the use of radio to reach followers. She founded one of the first “megachurches” in Los Angeles, the Angelus Temple, where she attracted a large following with her flamboyant sermons.

In one famous sermon entitled “Arrested for Speeding,” she took inspiration from the experience of being pulled over. She dressed in a police uniform and appeared on stage revving a motorcycle and warned followers about “speeding to hell.”

While she decried the godlessness of theater and film, she sought to make her church as entertaining an experience as those mediums. 

One of McPherson’s critics was Baltimore’s H.L. Mencken, who of course had little praise for McPherson’s ideology or for her support of the anti-evolution side of the Scopes trial.

MacPherson recovering after kidnapping incident, 1926

He ended up coming to her defense during a media circus in which she was accused of staging her own kidnapping in 1926. It seems that Mencken detested the growing culture of Hollywood spectacle as much as he detested anti-science crusaders.

The trial in which McPherson stood accused of the fraud, wrote Mencken, “was an orgy typical of the half-fabulous California courts. The very officers of justice denounced her riotously in the Hearst papers while it was in progress….”

The Foursquare Church continued to flourish after McPhersons death in 1944. Having been racially integrated under McPherson’s leadership, the church continues to have a diverse membership. The Brentwood cookbook includes standard church cookbook recipes like Scripture Cake, plus some surprises like bagels and Nigerian Jollof Rice.

I took the easy way out with this tasty concoction and I can’t say I regretted it… With low energy and hostile weather going on, I’d eat something like this every night of February if I could.

Recipe:

1 Lb beef, ground
1 Cup chopped onion
2 15-oz cans pork & beans
1 can butter lima beans, drained
1 Cup tomato catsup
1 Tablespoon liquid smoke
3 Tablespoon white vinegar
1 dash pepper
.5 Lb bacon, cut into small pieces
1 can kidney beans, drained
.25 Cup packed brown sugar
1 Teaspoon salt*

Brown ground beef in skillet; drain off fat and put beef in large crock pot. Brown bacon and onions; drain off fat. Add bacon, onions and remaining ingredients to crock pot. Mix well. Cover and cook on low 4 to 9 hours.Recipe may be cut in half for small crock pot.

Recipe from “B. F. G. C. Cooks”

* As much as I love salt, I’m gonna have to disagree with Marjorie on this one. With all the canned things and ketchup and bacon? I assure you it was fine without.