Arlene Miller

In her lifetime, she’s been a student, nurse, activist, missionary, professor, international speaker, published author, and missions coordinator. Arlene Miller is ready for your questions.

What issues faced the BIC Church when you were growing up?

The whole issue of what to do about covering your head was a big struggle for me. When my sister and I were about 12, the pastor at Valley Chapel said something to my parents about it being time for us to get baptized and join the church. But we didn’t want to wear those coverings. And I think it was more than that: I really wanted to do what I felt God wanted me to do. I don’t know how my folks worked it out, but he agreed to baptize us, if we were at least willing to wear coverings at communion. So my mother drug us off to get coverings, and we’d put these things on to go to communion, and then, we never wore them after that. Anyway, when I came to Messiah in the 1950s, when it was still an Academy, almost everyone in my class had their hair up in one of those little buns and those little coverings. And so, it was a struggle for me for a while to figure out what to do about this head covering business. If you wanted to pray in your dorm room, were you supposed to put something on and cover your head? I mean, it was really a big issue.

Were there any historical events that were particularly formative in your life and faith?

I had African American friends at my church, Valley Chapel BIC, who could not travel South very easily because hotels wouldn’t take them in. Some even had relatives in Cleveland whose houses were being burned during the riots up there. And so, the Civil Rights Movement was a huge part of my life. At the time, I was in Cleveland getting a Bachelor’s degree in nursing at Auburn Hospital, and during that year, there was a lot going on with the Civil Rights. I never felt I could go marching. I was just never a marcher kind of person. But I did go down to the local Young Women’s Christian Association to help out with an afternoon youth program for African American children from the area. That was my small but personal contribution to the Civil Rights Movement.

My father grew up in the Amish church, but he had had a conversion experience and left that church. Later, he married my mother and became BIC. So, I had all these Amish relatives on this side. And then over here, I had all these black friends during the Civil Rights Movement. These black people wanted to know about these funny people in their buggies, and my Amish friends wanted to know about these black people making all this trouble. I mean, I always wished I could get them together in the same room. And when my parents had their 50th anniversary, I almost did. One of my cousins, who remained Amish, came to this event, and some of our black friends came. But I just had all these diverse people in my life, and I loved it.

You spent three years teaching in Zambia with BIC World Missions. What about Zambian culture then struck you as being different from that of North America?

Humor. Things that I felt were funny, they would go, “What’s the matter with that lady?” But then they would laugh about things that I would think, “What are they laughing about? This is horrible!” I didn’t understand it at all until I did some reading that helped me see that sometimes, laughter in Zambia culture was a response to pain or things that were troubling. Not that people thought it was funny, but that was how they handled it. It took me a while to understand that.

What did you do when you returned to the States?

Before I left for Zambia, I had been asked by the dean at Kent State to come and teach there. But I had decided to go overseas. So then when I got back, I contacted her and she said I could come. So I went to Kent State then and taught for six years. It was during those years that I really got involved with Nurses Christian Fellowship, and started a group on campus. In the years after my time at Kent, I began to do a lot of speaking for NCF and this meant I had the opportunity to travel to Korea three times, Fiji, Hong Kong, China, and Europe a couple times. I had a friend, Judith Shelly, and she had been with NCF for years. We did some of the speaking together, and she was also a writer. Most of what we were both interested in had to do with ethics and nursing theory. So, we wrote a book—Called to Care—together, looking at nursing from a Christian worldview. The book is still being used; in fact, they professors use it over at Messiah College. We revised it once, and it probably needs to be done again…but I’m not going there.

In your years in the BIC Church, how has the Church changed? What growth have you seen?

Mike Holland, BIC World Missions
Well, I do think we have now many more people who do not have a Brethren in Christ background. And I try to be sensitive to not play the name game.

Do you have any words of advice or encouragement to young people trying to decide what they want to do in life?

My advice is to be open to take the next step. I don’t know that God lays it all out—maybe He does for some people, but He certainly didn’t for me. Even though I had this sense of mission, I never had an arrow, a one-way sign that said, “Go this way.” And even in making some of the decisions that I made, I had a lot of misgivings. But my prayer always was, “God, I’m going this way. But this is the wrong way, I trust that you will bump me.” And now, looking back, I can see God’s hand in all of it. So I think that would be my best advice. Just be open and be willing to take the next step.