Barbara Jean Wendland

Barbara Cook Wendland, who died at a Temple hospital on December 25, 2023, after a brief but difficult illness with pancreatic cancer, was at different times during her life a writer, theologian, philanthropist, church and community volunteer, mathematician, and homemaker.

She was born Barbara Jean Cook on December 9, 1933, in Shreveport, Louisiana, the only child of Joe Berry Cook and Louise Elizabeth Patterson Cook, originally of Gilmer, Texas, and Malvern, Arkansas. The family moved to Houston in 1935.

Barbara attended Houston public schools, graduating from Lamar High School as valedictorian in 1951. She then attended S.M.U. and graduated in 1955 with a B.A. in mathematics with highest honors. At S.M.U. she was president of Alpha Delta Pi sorority and a member of Phi Beta Kappa. After graduation she worked as a mathematician and programmer, first at Magnolia Petroleum in Dallas and then in the geophysics research department of Humble Oil in Houston.

Barbara married Erroll Wendland November 21, 1959, at St. Paul’s Methodist Church in Houston and moved to Temple, where she spent the rest of her life and for many years was a key volunteer in local organizations. She served as president of the Cultural Activities Center and the Contem-poraries, in addition to being active in other C.A.C. member groups including civic chorus groups, the Piano Ensemble, and Great Books. While serving as president of the Western Hills Elementary P.T.O. in 1972-73, she led in the creation of a library at the school. She also served as president of the Temple Music Club and the Friends of the Temple Public Library.

Barbara was a lifelong Methodist, originally in St. Paul’s Methodist Church of Houston and then for more than 50 years in First United Methodist Church of Temple. She sang in its chancel choir from 1959 to 2006, and for decades she coordinated, taught, and developed classes for children and adults. For many years she was a lay member of the Central Texas Annual Conference, the UMC’s regional governing body for central Texas. She was twice a lay delegate to General Con-ference, the UMC’s worldwide governing body, and she served for eight years as an officer of its General Board of Church and Society.

In 1983 Barbara started commuting to S.M.U. to attend Perkins School of Theology, from which she received a Master of Theological Studies degree in 1986. During this time she also participated in the original two-year session of the UMC’s Academy for Spiritual Formation in Nashville.

Barbara was the author of three books: God’s Partners: Lay Christians at Work (Judson Press, 1993), coauthored with Stanley J. Menking; Spiritual Family Trees (Alban Institute, 2001), coauthored with Larry W. Easterling; and Misfits: The Church’s Hidden Strength (St. Johann Press, 2010). In 1992 she began writing and publishing a monthly letter, Connections, about needed reforms to religious beliefs and the institutional church. For decades she mailed Connections to several thousand lay and clergy members of a dozen church denominations, plus many nonchurchgoers, in all U.S. states and several other countries. She also made issues available through her website, www.connectionsonline.org , and sponsored educational seminars and curricula.

With her husband and daughter, Barbara was a trustee of the Joe B. and Louise P. Cook Founda-tion established by her parents, who preceded her in death in 1989 and 1990. Personally and through the foundation, she supported libraries, hospitals, church congregations, universities, literacy programs, museums, groups fighting poverty and addiction, scholarships, opera companies, symphony orchestras, a cultural center, a community theater, PBS TV stations, KMFA classical 89.5 FM, a church-related retirement home system, organizations promoting progressive Christianity, and university professorships in math and theology.

A great sadness late in her life was the sense of being rejected and abandoned by First United Methodist of Temple, the congregation she had served faithfully for so many decades, seeking to integrate knowledge from fields such as art, history, science, and psychology in order to promote lay ministry and to teach justice and compassion for the most vulnerable members of society. After the remaining members left the national denomination, she was sustained by many wider friendships in the United Methodist Church, including many longtime Connections readers who had felt like minorities and misfits in their own congregations.

She was a longtime member of the Executive Board of Perkins School of Theology at S.M.U. In 2017 she received an award from the Westar Institute for promoting religious literacy. One of her last major education projects was to support the Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice led by Joerg Rieger at Vanderbilt University Divinity School.

Her husband Erroll preceded her in death in 2018. Barbara is survived by her daughter, Carol Wendland, with whom she enjoyed doing crosswords and puzzles and attending live cinema broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera; and a foster daughter, Maria Goreti Lima of Colombia, who became part of the Wendland family in 1977-78 when she came from her native Brazil to live with them as an American Field Service exchange student.

Scanio-Harper Funeral Home is handling arrangements. After a private graveside service, a memo-rial service will be held Saturday, January 13, at 1 p.m. at the Cultural Activities Center in Temple. In lieu of flowers, it would honor her memory to give generously to organizations that support so-cial justice, progressive education, and classical music.