Chapter 51: What was the strangest religious ceremony you've ever experienced?
Originally written December 6, 2021
The strangest religious ceremony? The easiest answer to this probably would be the pagan Beltane (May Day) celebration up in the Sandia Mountains I attended in the mid 1980s with Jackalope Coven — as well as our kids, various Wiccans and fellow travelers from Albuquerque. And a few onlookers, some of which I wish hadn’t shown up.
A couple of bikers, probably there for the booze and the bare-breasted women, got in a fight shortly after the Maypole ceremony and one of them slashed the other’s throat. It was like a Pagan Altamont, (though in this case, the victim didn’t die).
I’ve always been proud of how our little pagan community instantly sprang into action.
Among us were some medical technicians who stopped the bleeding in the victim’s throat.
Many of the women immediately saw to it that the kids — including Molly, who I don’t even think was in school yet — were safe.
Some of the men immediately nabbed and subdued the slasher, while others, including me, formed a protective line to make sure the other bikers couldn’t free the violent idiot before the cops got there.
Yes, we reverted to stereotypical gender roles, men subdue the villain, women protect the children. But what the fuck, it worked!
I don’t know who called the ambulance and alerted police. This was the era before cell phones, so whoever it was had to go back to his or her car and drive to a telephone.
That definitely was the wildest religious event I’ve ever seen. But what made it so crazy wasn’t the religion or the ceremony. It was idiotic outsiders disrupting our celebration.
So the strangest religious ceremony I’ve ever been to, in which the strangeness was in the ceremony itself, happened a few years earlier.
Back when I was freelancing for The Santa Fe Reporter in March 1983, I saw posters around town advertising a midget gospel singer.
The event was sponsored by a small local, primarily Hispanic Pentecostal congregation, associated with the Assembly of God. It would be taking place in the “banquet room” of a Cerrillos Road motel.
My editor agreed that this would be a classic Steve Terrell story for the paper.
I interviewed the star of the show, a Missouri native named Lowell Mason, who proudly billed himself as “The World’s Shortest Gospel Singer.” The 3-foot, 10-inch Mason told me, “Nobody has disputed my claim. If a gospel singer came around who was shorter than me, I’d gladly relinquish my title.”
Nobody disputed him that night.
The opener that night was the church’s pastor, a guy named Leroy -- yes, an actual Rev. Leroy, praise Flip Wilson -- who sang a few numbers over pre-recorded music on a portable cassette player.
His words sang of the love of Christ, but his body was sending a different message. Wearing tight-fitting jeans, Santa Fe’s Rev. Leroy shook his hips in a way that would make Elvis -- and half the strippers at Cheeks -- blush.
Then came the star of the show.
Though some of the posters for the event showed Mason with a guitar, that night his only musical accompaniment was a cassette player.
In the article I wrote I described the background music as “white `contemporary’ Lawrence Welk-style gospel. And despite Mason’s size, his voice was nearly as deep as Waylon Jennings’.
Hey, Lowell is on YouTube. (Note from 2025: Sorry, but I don’t hear much Waylon in here!):
Now this probably sounds more like bad karaoke than a religious ceremony. But here’s where it turned weird. From my Reporter story:
The highlight of Wednesday’s show was a special `blessing’ ceremony that took place during the performance. For this, Mason said that if anyone wanted to be blessed they should just stand up during his next song. [church elders] would then go around and anoint anyone standing with oil — nobody ever said what kind of oil it was — and pray for them.
As it turned out, about half of the audience stood for a blessing. Mason had to go through about five songs before everyone who wanted to take part had a chance to be blessed.
For those participating, it was a highly emotional and spiritual experience. Beneath the music of Mason’s songs there could be heard the deep-voice intoning of formal prayers. They were the elders who were doing the blessing and anointing. Their voices were joined by the spontaneous prayers and ecstatic moaning (`Thank you, Jesus!’) of those who had received the blessings.
The Holy Spirit came to several people that night in the motel banquet room as the mustachioed midget in the three-piece suit sang along to his prerecorded music.
The already Vonnegut-esque scene was further embellished by a lighted sign from that read `Holiday Liquors,’ which was visible through the window behind Mason.
A non-Christian might not have found God at the show, but he might very well have found America.
And though there was no admission charged for the show, a collection plate was passed around — right after Mason gave an emotional pitch about his wife Judy being diagnosed with cancer.
There’s a coda to this bizarre little story.
Skip ahead to Monday March 16, 1992 — exactly nine years after the Reporter published my “singing midget” story — a man was arrested after firing at least six rounds from his car into the Agua Fria home of, you guessed it, Rev. Leroy.
The reverend, his wife and their young children were inside during the 7:30 a.m. shooting, sheriff’s detectives said. Nobody was injured but several windows of the house and three vehicles parked there were shattered, and the shooter apparently rammed a motorcycle that was parked in front of the preacher’s house.
Though I couldn’t get anyone from the family to talk to me I was lucky that one of the eye witnesses of the shooting was iconic New Mexico reporter Ernie Mills, who lived fairly close to Rev. Leroy and saw the incident as he was driving to work that morning.
Apparently, Ernie’s reporter instincts kicked in when he saw the mayhem ensuing and he gave me a clear, detailed description of what he’d seen a few hours before. Some eyewitnesses might have been too shaken or too scared to talk to the press.
But not Ernie!
Besides the windows, Rev. Leroy’s reputation was shattered because of the attack.
The shooter, a 31-year-old guy who had been a member of Rev. Leroy’s congregation
At his arraignment, his lawyer, the late Bob Sena, told the judge that his client had been stressed by “contacts” between his wife and Rev. Leroy that began about six months before the shooting. “It caused great disruption to my client’s family and lifestyle,” Sena said. “It was a long-standing situation.”
Court documents revealed that during July of the previous year, The Assemblies of God suspended Rev. Leroy’s credentials as a pastor for reasons of “moral failure.”
There also was a dispute between Leroy and a former associate pastor of the congregation, who, in another court document, the disgraced preacher claimed had “slandered” him by wrongly accusing him of adultery, fornication and domestic violence.
Later that year the shooter entered into a plea deal in which he got a suspended sentence. A few months later his wife filed for divorce.
I’m not sure what happened to Rev. Leroy. But, at least as of January 2020, there was still is a church with the old name listed — with an Agua Fria address. [Note from 2025: I couldn’t find it last week when editing this chapter, though the church appears to be still active in New Mexico.]
And Lowell Mason, the self-proclaimed midget gospel singer, continued his ministry well into his 80s. He’s got a website, although it hasn’t been updated.
His wife Judy apparently survived her cancer, or whatever ailment her husband was soliciting donations for that night I saw him. She was still around also, at least at the time the site was last updated.
Note from 2025: Lowell Mason died in Missouri in 2023. HERE is his obituary. According to his website, Judy was still with us.
And Ernie Mills, who I got to know better when I moved my center of operations to the Roundhouse press room, and who I considered a mentor, died in 2003. Click HERE for a column I wrote the day he died.
All this has gotten me in the mood for some good old gospel music. Here’s Jim & Jesse: