San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Well-known minister visited La Villita church
It’s an interesting story of the church, an alcoholic, a carillon and Dr. Peale … all in one. This is my transcript of a sermon he gave, probably in the mid-1980s. I grew up in Scarsdale, N.Y., less than a 30-minute drive on Sunday mornings from lower Manhattan and Peale’s church at 29th Street and Fifth Avenue. I was already living in San Antonio but still getting mailed cassette (tapes) of his Sunday sermons. When I heard this one, my jaw dropped. I think the story may have been repeated in his autobiography.
The Little Church of La Villita had an eventful history, but this is the only episode that involves someone who was nationally famous at the time.
Norman Vincent Peale, a Methodist minister, was head pastor of the Marble Collegiate Church from
1932 to 1984, had longrunning radio and television shows and wrote more than 40 books. One of them was “The True Joy of Positive Thinking: An Autobiography,” a collection of essays and sermons published in 1984 that includes a mention of the Rev. Paul Soupiset — one of several in Peale’s work.
Soupiset, a former clothing-store manager and salesman, felt called to enter the ministry in his late 40s — inspired by Peale, according to his son, Fred Soupiset.
Not a regular churchgoer, Paul stayed home on his only day off while his wife and children went to St. Matthew’s Methodist Church in north Houston. “One Sunday, he happened to turn on our new 10-inch RCA table model TV and tuned into Dr. Norman Vincent Peale.” The pastor’s upbeat mix of psychology and religion “lit a fire under Dad, and he committed his life to serving God and man in a significant way,” his son remembered. “He became active in our church and began to study for ministry in the Methodist Church.”
Soupiset took correspondence courses toward becoming a licensed local preacher or LLP in the Methodist Church, which he achieved by the time the family moved to San Antonio in 1955. Still working in retail at Russell’s clothing store on Alamo Plaza, he completed his supervision at Highland Terrace Methodist Church and filled in for pastors of other area churches. Busy as he was, Soupiset was still looking for a greater challenge … and he found it when he discovered what was then La Villita Church, locked and empty at 508 Villita St.
As he told the San Antonio Light, April 18, 1960, he’d been inspired by Peale’s broadcasts “to have a little chapel in the heart of some city.” When he didn’t find one in Houston or San Antonio, he decided to found one.
The small, stone Gothic Revival building he had seen on lunchtime walks had made the cut in 1939 when the city undertook a federally funded restoration of the 200-year-old neighborhood of La Villita — clearing shacks and sparing structures of historic value. The church dated back to 1878, when the congregation of German Methodists who built it received its charter from the Southern Methodist Church. After they outgrew it and moved, it was an early home of St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, a historically Black congregation.
The church had some down time and received a needed renovation in 1941, as La Villita was readied to
be a municipal showplace. During the early 1940s, it was the La Villita Theater for puppet shows and experimental productions. Redubbed The Little Church Around the Corner, echoing the name of a show-business wedding favorite in New York, it hosted an evangelical mission that broadcast guest speakers on the radio in 1943, then housed a Red Cross training center for the duration of World War II. After that, the city promoted the church as a convention and wedding venue. The Daughters of the American Revolution, or DAR, used it for a memorial service at their convention in 1945, and the church was on the La Villita tour given to visiting dignitaries. Unchurched couples who wanted a religious site for their nuptials could choose from a list of clergy of different denominations to act as their officiant.
From 1947 through 1954,
the Business Men’s Bible Class met each Sunday morning at what they called the “La Villita Chapel” for fellowship and lectures. A nonsectarian group that dated back to the mid-1920s, the class previously had met in ballrooms at the Gunter, Plaza and Menger hotels. After an hour and a half at La Villita, members were expected to attend services at their home churches. When the Business Men — who reached an unwieldy 2,000-plus membership — disbanded for good to start smaller groups elsewhere, the little church was left alone again.
When Soupiset first visited the church, according to Peale’s story in an undated reprint from Guideposts magazine, of which he was co-publisher, “cobwebs and dust were everywhere. The only equipment: Some pews stacked in a corner and one rickety table.” Unfazed, he asked the city and was given a month-tomonth rental. Because he still had commitments to two other churches, Soupiset scheduled his Sunday candlelight vespers service for 6 p.m.
In the early days of his ministry at the nondenominational Little Church of La Villita, the pastor still worked full time in retail. There was no formal membership, no pledge cards and a need to fund the twice-weekly distributions of food and clothing to the needy. The church was supported entirely by donations, and Soupiset didn’t take a salary for the first year or so.
“He gave up a good income in the clothing business and walked in faith that the Lord would provide for our family,” Fred Soupiset said. “(Eventually) he did receive income from the little his ministry brought in. There were times without income and times of moderate income, but he felt so strongly about his calling that he relied on God’s provision.”
During the first year, a friend of the church made an anonymous gift of a new carillon (bell tower) and organ. Wanting to honor Peale’s inspiration, Soupiset wrote him a letter inviting him to their dedication. As Peale said in the taped sermon you transcribed, “Since I’d never had bells dedicated to me before, I thought I had to go. I had a vision of them pealing out all over the City of San Antonio. So I went down and helped him dedicate the bells and gave a talk — of course.”
It was at this time that an alcoholic gets into the story — but it wasn’t the Rev. Paul Soupiset.
At the 1957 dedication ceremony, as Peale says in his autobiography, “the man who made the statement” dedicating the bells, “an ex-alcoholic,” got flustered and said “in memory” instead of “in honor of ” the still-extant Peale. The unnamed man got confused with Soupiset, who is presented by Peale as “lost,” “confused,” “depressed” and “drunk on Saturday night” in more than one retelling.
The Little Church pastor did minister to alcoholics but wasn’t one himself, says his son. “He was given the label by one of Dr. Peale’s ghost writers.
When it appeared in a national publication, I immediately wrote to Dr. Peale to ask for a retraction. He wrote back a letter of sincere apology, explained what had happened and offered to make it right.”
With the best of intentions, that’s not what happened. The conflation of Soupiset with Unnamed Recovering Alcoholic Statement reader was recycled by Peale multiple times … but always in the context of great admiration for Soupiset’s ministry and pride at being associated with it.
In his decade as pastor, the Little Church established traditions of serving Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, hosted the Starving Artists Show and beat back an effort to oust him and the unsightly food lines before HemisFair ’68.
Soupiset died Dec. 11, 1968, of a heart attack. The funeral was held in the Little Church, with wealthy benefactors crowded next to the humblest of his flock — so many that windows were open on both sides for people to stand outside and listen.
In his eulogy, assistant pastor David Edmunds called him “a man of great faith who wanted to minister to the needs of people in a very practical way.”