Church in a Saloon and a Dance Hall in Church

Joplin earned a well-deserved reputation during its early mining days as a wide-open place where whiskey flowed freely and other forms of vice abounded. Saloons sat on nearly every block, and gambling parlors were almost as prevalent. The gambling halls often adjoined the saloons but not always. "Amusement emporiums" like Johnson's Vaudeville Variety Theatre, which I discussed in my previous two posts, offered ribald entertainment, and, for a price, female companionship could be had there and at other houses of ill fame in the downtown area. Almost from the town’s infancy, however, religion thrived alongside the revelry.

In fact, Joplin’s very first church service was held in a saloon. One day in early 1872, several men were discussing the need for a church when Kit Bullock, co-owner of Bullock and Boucher’s saloon on Main Street, offered his business as a sanctuary. Unknown to Bullock, one of the men among the group was an itinerant Methodist minister, and he promptly took the saloonkeeper up on his offer, saying he would hold services the very next day if Bullock meant what he said. True to his word, Bullock cleaned up his saloon, replaced the whiskey bottles with candles, and laid planks across his beer kegs to serve as makeshift pews. The next day, the preacher showed up and delivered a sermon to several solemn and presumably sober worshipers.

Not only was Joplin’s first church service held in a saloon, but the town’s early houses of worship were also often given over to secular use, a practice that some observers found just as unseemly as holding church in a barroom. The Tabernacle, erected at the corner of Fourth and Virginia in 1876, served not only as one of the town’s principal places of worship but also as a sort of town hall that played host to numerous public gatherings, including many that were offered purely for entertainment. For instance, when a roller skating craze swept across the country in 1877, the Tabernacle was turned into a skating rink, and large groups of “Holy Rollers,” as the skaters were often called, would gather each night to participate in their newfound recreation.

Such mixing of religion and merrymaking earned Joplin frequent criticism from its neighbors as an evil and irreverent place. In January of 1880, the Neosho Miner and Mechanic waxed indignant over the indecorous fundraising activities of a Joplin congregation that hoped to build a new church. Calling Joplin a “queer place,” the editor continued,

   The ladies belonging to the church are working with vim. During the holidays they had a festival, at which there  was music and dancing, and several articles of value were raffled off, the whole thing  realizing about a hundred dollars for the cause of religion. To-night they give a grand leap year ball, at  which a magnificent diamond ring is to be drawn, lottery fashion. Some of the most prominent lady members of the church are floor managers, and doubtless they will waltz a good amount of money out of those who attend. We presume the minister will be the beau of the ball, and all the ladies will vie with each other as to who shall have the honor of dancing with him. Thus do Christians in Joplin renounce the devil and all his work, and the vain pomp and glory of this world.

Joplin, though, did not meekly abide such criticism. Responding to the Miner and Mechanic, the editor of the Joplin Herald accused his counterpart at Neosho of being “pious and sanctimonious.”
This story, like my previous two blog entries, is condensed from my book Wicked Joplin.