By Michael Laris, Published: December 26

A few years after Gertrude Troyer’s family gave up its horse and buggy, she hopped in her brother’s 1960 Pontiac Bonneville headed for Kenilworth. They didn’t know how to get there, so they just drove to the White House and eventually found a pay phone.

She was a 21-year-old country girl from Plain City, Ohio, on her way to a short stint volunteering for her Mennonite church in an impoverished Washington neighborhood.

Forty-six years later, she’s still here, standing on her tippytoes at 5:20 a.m., using a butter knife to help slide a plastic bucket of sugar from the shelf above her counter to begin work on a rush of cake orders for Christmas.

Gertie, as everyone calls her, has made it here as a missionary, a summer camp organizer and a construction office custodian. She has taken abuse from surly teens, has prayed with relatives of the murdered and now helps support herself running a makeshift cake-baking business in the brick home she shares with one of the girls she first mentored decades ago.

Wearing a black veil over pulled-back gray hair, a red cotton cape dress that covers her from neck to ankles, and Asics running shoes, Troyer tackles her morning’s baking agenda — one strawberry supreme, three red velvet, a poundcake — with the same buoyant relentlessness she has brought to the rest of her life in the city.

“Most people know that’s not the norm. Most people don’t just leave their home towns and go someplace else almost completely opposite, and stay,” said her housemate, Cynthia Sharpe, 58, who was just 11 and living in the Kenilworth Courts housing project when Troyer arrived.

At first, Sharpe said she didn’t see Troyer “as an individual,” just as one of the friendly missionaries who came to help out. Another quizzical neighborhood kid was Vincent Wright Jr., now an officer with the D.C. police.

“I was like, ‘These are some homely-looking folks,’ ” Wright recalls. “That dress makes them look like, what’s that the girl on ‘Little House on the Prairie,’ Melissa Gilbert or something?”

But that faceless distance didn’t last.

“Some people kind of take to you,” Wright said. “I just got to know her.”

Thrifty roots

In the kitchen, Gertie is a machine.

She grabs eggs in her right hand and cracks them with a sharp knock against the egg in her left. Like some just-in-time manufacturing guru, she moves fast: batter in, rotate pan, cakes out, repeat. Flour gets measured to the hundredth of a pound on her digital scale.

“It’s the way I’ve been doing it for years, and it comes out right,” said Troyer, 68.

She grew up Amish and learned to bake without electricity in her mother’s kitchen. By age 15, her father reluctantly followed local church leaders as they shifted toward a less conservative religious tradition as Mennonites. Although they still aspired to live as Jesus would, they did so with cars and electric lights.

Troyer’s frugal roots remain. She uses an empty 25-pound Domino sugar sack as a trash bag, and scrapes the paddle of her stand mixer with her fingers to get off every bit of batter, then scrapes her fingers with the spatula to get the last few drops.

She’s still smarting over the time, years ago, when a pair of red velvets went bad. She used cake flour, not self-rising.

They were dry and flat, and went to the birds.

“I was so beat out I did that,” she said, before translating the German-influenced holdover phrase for the uninitiated. “I was disgusted with myself. That’s exactly what it means.”

Then she burst out in the playful, wholehearted laugh that has melted tough kids, skeptical adults and longtime customers alike.

“Who likes to mess up a cake?” she said.



Winning them over

A year after she arrived, Washington descended into riots after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Troyer and the others in the small Fellowship Haven church told visiting Mennonites to leave.

“The city was in an uproar,” she said. “We didn’t want to have more people of our color than we needed.”

A grocery store down the road was looted, and some in the predominantly black neighborhood offered her protection. But she didn’t fear.

Race has been a presence over the years, but not a defining one. One uncle worried Troyer might marry a black man. And some in Kenilworth recoiled at the white outsider.

Patricia Roy grew up in the Kenilworth projects, and Troyer soon began to win her over. Troyer took her and Sharpe to Ohio. The dark nights terrified Roy, but she found peace in the hayloft. “We would be sitting on it with our feet hanging, just up there in the barn,” Roy said.

But years later in the District, Roy slid into a state of deep insecurity and negativity, she said, and she lashed out at Troyer, the closest authority figure around. “I could be mean when I wanted to be,” she said. “I wished she would go back home to Ohio.”

The Kenilworth area, tucked between the Anacostia Freeway to the east and the Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens to the west, has a rough history. Poverty rates have soared, the number of teenage pregnancies is high and birth weights remain low.

Troyer witnessed terrible choices and tragic circumstances. One boy who often came around the church killed himself, apparently after a bad drug trip. A young woman who studied the Bible with them was killed by “her supposed boyfriend,” Troyer said. Yet another was missing for days before she was found dead on a staircase.

When it came to Roy, Troyer wouldn’t budge.

“Nope, she’s got some spunk to her,” Roy said. She kept reaching out, trying to connect. “She didn’t retaliate back. She just kept loving me until I couldn’t resist it anymore.”

‘Don’t want to go big’

Troyer wants her neighbors to be able to afford her creations, just like her mother, who sewed and sold Amish men’s suits for $4 apiece.

She charges $22 for the chocolate butter and $24 for the coconut pineapple. A two-pound fruitcake, sort of a cross between walnut bread and pecan pie, goes for $21. White potato pie sells for $12. More than 90 cakes were stacked up in the basement for Christmas.

“This is an operation and a half, believe you me, and the cakes are the bomb,” said Patricia Ferguson, who stopped in to pick up a poundcake for her son’s 36th birthday. “This is a blessing.”

Also sort of a mixed blessing. Troyer loves communing with customers. But she doesn’t want an employee, and she can do only so much.

“I don’t want to go big,” she said. “I don’t want to become a millionaire. I like living.”

Over the decades, missionaries wed and left, and the Mennonite elders eventually decided to pull out. Troyer had suitors within the church, but she never married. “Gertie, she’s the last of the Mohicans,” said Wright, the D.C. police officer.

There are only a handful of members now, including the three now-grown children — Sharpe, Wright and Roy — who became Troyer’s friends.

They talked with a Pennsylvania bishop about bringing in new blood, maybe a pastor and more missionaries, but there were too many strings. The church preaches pacifism and wanted Wright to leave the police force. The bishop also wanted Sharpe, a fervent Redskins fan, to lose her television, which some view as an intrusion into God’s kingdom.

Troyer agrees with the bishop’s stance on church teachings. But when there’s a disconnect between purity and the people who have become her family, she’s chosen to live by example rather than being doctrinaire.

“I’ve watched her over the years just give it her all,” said Sharpe, who does the same.

She and Roy became public school teachers. Wright mentors kids and counsels offenders on the difference between jailhouse conversions and lasting ones. And they all run a Mennonite summer camp in Pennsylvania where needy Washington area youths can taste old-school values.

Troyer moved in with Sharpe in the 1990s to help her care for her dying mother, who suffered from diabetes. She stayed on, and rented out her own home at low rates to families who needed a break. Troyer would quietly save some of each month’s rent to return to departing families as down payments on homes of their own.

“God, Mom, and then Gertie — that’s where a lot of my strength came from,” Sharpe said.

Concerned for children

Troyer’s family, including 12 brothers and sisters, was touched with tragedy before she left Ohio. Her 8-year-old brother, Joseph, was driving a tractor out to water the calves when he was thrown off and killed.

Years later, a church newsletter describing terrible living conditions for some District children brought Troyer to tears.

“I said to the Lord: ‘What then? What do you want from me?’ ” Troyer recalled. “Just like that, it wasn’t audible, but it was very, very clear to me — D.C. This place where the children were came into my thinking and my mind and my spirit.”

Just before 7 a.m., before the sun is up, Troyer taps red velvet layers out of their pans and places them on cooling racks, then gets in her beat-up Toyota Camry and heads for a neighborhood track for her daily three-mile walk.

She’s always busy, with another lap, another cake, another person to help along his or her path.

As she walked, a glorious, magenta-saturated sunrise rose over her waking city.

“That’s what people miss when they get up late. They miss the beautiful morning,” she said. “You’ve got to capture it when it’s pretty. They don’t last long.”

For 28 years I have saved this article, and just yesterday I was reading it and noticed for the first time, perhaps, the beautiful influence religion had in what this family did for their son and brother.

When Two Traditions Wed

Interfaith marriages have helped spread religious tolerance in society but can present intractable problems for some couples.

Interfaith marriage has never been so visible or so popular in America as it is today. Steve and Cokie Roberts, Larry and Shawn King, Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky: Interfaith couples occupy a prominent place on the public stage, not to mention a prominent role in the private lives of Americans. Almost one in two marriages in the U.S. are between people from different faiths, a historic high.

The rise of interfaith marriage can be read as but the latest success story in the continuing American Experiment, wherein differences of all sorts are fused into a single, vibrant polity. As Naomi Schaefer Riley notes in " 'Til Faith Do Us," most Americans see interfaith marriage "as a confirmation of American tolerance, of our progress as a society." To judge by Ms. Riley's engaging and incisive account—combining clear-eyed analysis with polling data and the details of more than a hundred interviews—interfaith marriage has indeed brought about a wider acceptance of America's many religions and religious backgrounds even if, as she shows, it has created a few problems of its own.

Millions of Americans, it is clear, have learned from their own spouses—or from the marriages of friends and family members—about faiths other than the ones they were born into. In doing so, they have come to value or at least understand otherwise alien rituals and doctrines. If differences between religious traditions are no longer a source of serious social division in the United States these days, Ms. Riley argues, one reason appears to be that couples bridge the divide themselves.

As one might expect, there are many reasons for the rise of interfaith marriage. They range from the ever-greater frequency of children going off to college—an experience that brings Americans from diverse backgrounds together—to the growing power of American individualism, which puts a premium on choice over collective identity. In recent years, Ms. Riley notes, what might be called the "soul mate" model of marriage has grown more popular as well, increasing the possibility of people from different faiths choosing to make a life together. According to this model, marriage is primarily an expressive connection rather than an institution that bundles romantic love, children, religious faith and mutual aid (material and social).

Thus many Americans begin their marriages believing that love will conquer all, including religious differences. But when the honeymoon is over, love proves less than omnipotent, and religious differences may reassert themselves, especially after children arrive. "Deciding how to raise children," Ms. Riley writes, "is probably the highest hurdle interfaith parents face."

Are the kids to be raised Muslim or Mormon? Is a Christmas tree appropriate in a half-Jewish home? Should Johnny be sent to both the (evangelical) Young Life group and (Catholic) religious education? One Jewish-Catholic couple interviewed by Ms. Riley (a former member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial-page staff) found themselves arguing over whether to baptize their daughter. Questions like these can "tear at the fabric of a marriage," Ms. Riley says; this particular couple ended up in divorce court because of their religious disagreement about child-rearing. Ms. Riley notes that couples from different faiths would do well, in the courtship phase of their relations, to discuss child-rearing's religious dimensions.

And perhaps life's other religious dimensions. On average, Ms. Riley says, interfaith couples are less likely to be happy in their marriages and—in some combinations—more likely to divorce than couples who share the same faith. There may be a religious cost as well—for the married couple, a loss of steadiness in observance and belief. Meanwhile, the children raised in interfaith homes are more likely than the children of same-faith homes to reject their parents' faiths. " 'Til Faith Do Us Part" finds that the children of interfaith couples, in their early years, are less likely to attend religious services and less likely, as adults, to affiliate themselves with a religious tradition. A record-setting 32% of young adults say that they have no religious affiliation, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. The rise of interfaith marriage may well be a cause.

It turns out, then, that interfaith marriage shores up the American Experiment in certain ways, fostering tolerance and reciprocal regard, and yet undermines it in others, weakening the family and the religious ties that have long bound Americans to one another. Religious groups in particular have reason to be concerned, as the chain of belief and affiliation, from one generation to the next, is broken. But what can they do in a society as pluralistic and tolerant as America has become?

Ms. Riley concludes her reporting and analysis by suggesting that religious communities strike a delicate balance in their approach to interfaith marriages and families. On the one hand, they must welcome them if they wish to keep up a connection with the believing spouse and his or her children. But they must also provide a strong sense of community and a gracious but confident expression of their own religious worldview. "Regularly engaging nonmember spouses in conversations about the faith is important," she writes, noting that such engagement, if done with a soft touch, may bring the spouse into the fold. Finally, religious communities must focus more on reaching young adults, giving them a venue where they can engage their religious faith in a new way and meet a "soul mate" who draws them closer to the fold rather than leading them away from it.

—Mr. Wilcox is the director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia.

A version of this article appeared March 23, 2013, on page C6 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: When Two Traditions Wed.

I remember very clearly what would nowadays be called my spiritual awakening, the moment when faith became something personal to me. Until that day, I had been an extremely lucky child. I had a loving family and a comfortable life, and my father was a successful lawyer.

When I was 10, my father, just 40, suffered a severe stroke and was rushed to the hospital. The doctors were uncertain if he would survive. My mother, trying to keep a sense of normality for her children, sent us to school that morning.

To provide comfort to a frightened and bewildered boy, the head teacher, who was ordained, suggested that he and I kneel and pray for my father's recovery. I knew this was not as straightforward as he thought, and I plucked up the courage to whisper, "I'm afraid my father doesn't believe in God."

My teacher's reply was to make a lasting impression on me. "That doesn't matter," the man said. "God believes in him. He loves him without demanding or needing love in return."

My father ended up making a good recovery after a long rehabilitation. Nearly 50 years later, he remains an atheist. And while I did not become a fully committed and practicing Christian overnight, that conversation with my teacher started the process in which I came to recognize that there is a purpose to our existence beyond ourselves.

I was confirmed while I was at college, and faith has been a constant in my life. Yet even for nonbelievers, faith cannot be ignored. Today, religious beliefs -- whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, or other creeds -- are at the core of the lives of two-thirds of the world's population, giving them sense and direction. And it is not only a matter of numbers -- faith matters because it inspires people to act and raise their sights beyond themselves.

Sadly, religion can be distorted into violent extremism. Having spiritual beliefs has never rendered a person incapable of doing wrong or evil. But far more often, faith can be a force for good. I have witnessed its positive impact wherever I've gone in the world. I've seen it at major disasters in the incredible humanitarian efforts of the Red Cross, Islamic Relief, or World Jewish Relief, all organizations inspired by belief. I've also seen it in the central role of synagogues, churches, temples, and mosques in helping the poor, vulnerable, and disadvantaged in every country. In every case, men and women of faith who are trying to put the idea of unconditional love into practice are leading these efforts.

We should not allow those who use religion as a divisive force to succeed. We can harness its power and common values to bring us together. This is more important than ever in an age when the Internet, mass communication, and travel are shrinking the world.

None of this means giving up our own beliefs -- I always say that no matter the company, I remain a Christian. But it does require focusing on the vast areas we share and not on the much smaller areas that separate us. Two years ago, I launched the Tony Blair Faith Foundation. Among our projects, we've connected students from different continents and religions to help them learn from one another. We've united faith communities to fight against malaria, a disease that kills one million people a year. And we recently held a competition in which young people around the world created short films that showed what their religious beliefs mean to them. 

That idea of unconditional love, which made such an impression on a frightened young boy so long ago, is at the core of all our great faiths. We need to get back to this guiding light. By understanding one another, respecting one another, and acting with one another, we can show why humanity is made not poorer by faith but immeasurably richer. 




Tony Blair, who served as Britain's prime minister from 1997 to 2007, is the author of the new memoir "A Journey: My Political Life." To read more about his work, go to tonyblairfaithfoundation.org.

• OPINION: MAIN STREET
• JUNE 15, 2010

In the Name of the Father After a priest's murder, a community rallies.

• By WILLIAM MCGURN

• Article
• Comments

more in Opinion » BY WILLIAM MCGURN Of all the tests put to a priest, perhaps none is greater than the one Christ put to his disciples: Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of? For the Rev. Edward Hinds of St. Patrick's Church in Chatham, N.J., the cup of suffering came last October, when he was knifed to death in his own kitchen.

Father Ed's murder made headlines across the U.S., not least because the man accused of killing him is St. Pat's long-time custodian, known in the parish as Mr. Jose. Add to this the element of suburbia—Chatham is one of those towns ...


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