RED SHIRT TABLE - Twilla Two Bulls read from the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer on Sunday at Christ Church, praying for the "special needs of this congregation," as well as for the bishop who wants to close it.

But the tiny Native American congregation that worships in a rustic, rundown building that stands at the end of a dirt track on a desolate Badlands bluff 50 miles southeast of Rapid City doesn't think Bishop Creighton Robertson hears their prayers.

They say the presiding bishop of the South Dakota Episcopal Diocese doesn't listen to them or their needs, and they blame him for the impending closure of nine small Episcopal churches on Pine Ridge, including Christ Church, on Nov. 30.

Robertson says dwindling attendance and failing finances will force the closure and disposal of church buildings in Oglala, Wolf Creek, Wakpamni Lake, Manderson, Kyle, Potato Creek, Porcupine and Allen.

"Our prayers are useless on him," said Delores Two Bulls, Twilla's mother and wife of Christ Church's pastor, the Rev. Robert Two Bulls.

The Two Bulls and other members of Christ Church sent a six-page certified letter protesting the closure to Robertson in September, but the diocese refused delivery of it. Lydia Bear Killer, a lay leader at Inestimable Gift Church in Allen, invites Robertson to come to an Oct. 25 meeting in Allen, where representatives of the nine parishes say they'll meet at noon to collect filing fees and petition signatures for a temporary injunction to stop the planned closures. Inestimable Gift is also on the closure list.

"I invite him to come out to the Oct. 25 meeting and talk to us," Bear Killer said. "Churches should be a tool to fight the despair of high suicide rates and high death rates in these districts. He should be standing with us," she said.

Marwin Smith, a lay legal advocate on Pine Ridge, has been retained by the churches to fight the closures. When the diocese has closed other churches in the past, the ownership of those buildings has reverted to the original owners of the land or to the Oglala Sioux Tribe, which would happen in these cases, as well.

But the loss of nine churches at once "boggles the mind," said Lorri Ann Two Bulls. She grieves the possible closure of her home church, but she worries especially about the loss of St. John's Church in Pine Ridge, a historic building that served as an overflow hospital during the Wounded Knee Massacre. "The blood of the people who died there are still in the floorboards of that church," she said.

Lorri Ann refuses to accept Robertson's threat of closure, as does her father, the pastor.

"Locking the doors after Nov. 30? That's not going to happen. We're already planning our Christmas program. We've got more than 100 children to plan for. We're going to continue," Two Bulls said.

On Sunday, more than 50 people gathered at Christ Church for the baptism of four toddlers from the Two Bulls clan, defying the diocesan viewpoint that it is a small, dying parish.

Christ Church members say their congregation is vital and growing, as evidenced by numerous child baptisms and a recent marriage celebrated there.

Their pastor, who is the father, grandfather or uncle of many in the pews, preached about the importance of baptism and Holy Eucharist and about the "living community of believers" who filled seven rows of rustic wooden pews.

"That's what Christianity is all about. The living community of believers - that's us - through which Christ continues his ministry of community," Two Bulls said.

Christ Church is comprised largely of the Two Bulls clan, descendants of a man who helped build the first log-cabin church there in 1909.

With its 100th anniversary approaching in 2009, the closing is especially hard for Rev. Two Bulls to accept. He was baptized at the church in 1934 when he was 3 months old and he wants to be buried there when the time comes.

"The closing is painful, very painful, to think about," Two Bulls said Sunday as he prepared for the congregation's monthly worship service.

Without the church, where would his flock go to get their spiritual needs filled, he asks.

"Where are we going to take our pain for our funerals? Where will we do our baptisms? Would there be no more Holy Eucharist? Is that where we're headed? I hope not."

He vows to protect the Episcopal community at Red Shirt Table from the loss of its ancestral church, and to keep the doors open past Nov. 30, regardless of diocesan directives to the contrary.

"I don't serve Robertson, I serve God," Two Bulls said.

Contact Mary Garrigan at 394-8428 or mary.garrigan@rapidcityjournal.com