Dawn Ostrem
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Oct 10/01) - Terrorist attacks in the U.S. have sent shockwaves rippling as far as Yellowknife and the doors of churches are open wide to catch the tide.

Glad Tidings Fellowship Rev. Lynn Patterson said the number of people attending worship services has increased.

"People are searching for answers," she said over the phone from a conference in the U.S.

Her non-denominational Christian church had a full-page advertisement in Monday's News/North.

The ad showed a soft painting of Christ with arms reaching out and open palms skyward. The copy read, "Read the word in the Bible and go to Church and your life will change."

Patterson was in the U.S. when the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks took place. She said she noticed people flocking to Christian churches there and that congregations at the 14 churches with which she is involved in the Arctic are growing, too. "People are returning to the house of God for comfort and strength," she said.

When asked if she thought there is a danger associated with broadening the rift between Christians and the Taliban's self-proclaimed holy warriors of Islam, she answered she does not see it that way.

"We are thinking more about reaching out and helping people."

Baptist pastor Ken Warkentin agreed that the attacks have awakened people's need for God and spiritualism. But he also noted the growing references to religion on both sides.

"In God we trust?," he questioned of society. "Or in an effective economy do we trust?"

Warkentin, a well-read and academic minister of the Community Calvary Church in Yellowknife, has a master's degree in religious studies.

He leads a congregation of between 100 and 120 worshippers at a cosy Franklin Avenue chapel.

Warkentin said one of the biggest obstacles in building up a congregation in Yellowknife is the number of transient people who drift through the city.

He said it will be interesting to see if the congregation grows during these troubled times.

"People in Yellowknife are self-reliant, even dangerously so," he said. "They are individualistic with no need for God-dependence. I sometimes wonder if we are running away from that."

Father Felix Labat has been a Catholic priest in the North for 49 years. The doors to St. Patrick's Church are open to all, he said, no matter what the reason.

"Let the people judge by themselves," he said.

"For me (the issue) is a question of justice more than anything else. There are all kinds of religion."

Warkentin said he hopes the events -- the attacks and the American-led bombing raids against Afghanistan that began over the weekend -- will cause many people will to look toward church.

"Life is transient," he said. "It withers like the grass -- here today, gone tomorrow."