June 13, 2007
Born Again Church
Over the years I’ve seen at least three churches in our community transformed. They became a business office, a bar/tavern and a junk store. From an article in Scottish Life, author Keith Aitken says that many historic churches in Scotland are falling into disrepair. “The Scottish Civic Trust lists at least 300 churches in Scotland as being ‘at risk’ and the Executive’s heritage agency, Historic Scotland, has served grim notice that it alone cannot be expected to save the nation’s stock of unwanted houses of worship.”
It’s a sad commentary that churches built as a labor of love are now ‘unwanted houses of worship’. In America when a house of worship closes its doors it’s often because the congregants have moved to new facilities or they are combining their membership with another church. That’s not the picture seen in Scotland. Aitken states, “Attendances are falling annually by 2-3 percent. The Church of Scotland alone reckons that its congregations are declining by 17,000 a year.” Scottish communities are running out of churchgoers. We in the US are naive if we think the same thing can’t, or won’t happen to us.
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Gail;
-----Throughout Europe Christianity is in decline. Of course, Europe was the birthplace of the Enlightenment. They had had enough of religious wars raging back and forth across the land leaving smoking rubble and fields of stubble in their wake. So when the bathwater was changed, when it came time for this new way of perceiving the human condition, it is understandable (but not agreeable) that the baby was thrown out with it.
-----Although traditionalism had been cast into the mud, it has not been vanquished entirely. Regardless of the musings of philosophers and scholars, the common man who grows food and weaves clothes for them keeps a tighter hold on the knowledge and sentiments passed down through his mother and father. Still, the hold is not relentless because the staggering pace of change in our world also rips at its grasp.
-----Even though they are just buildings, there is something special in my heart about these converted churches. Whenever I see the spa shop on Selig, I remember that it was once the old catholic church. And I still see the Christian Church on the corner of 3rd and Cascade. But when I see the gutted out principles of fellowship in the trashcans of some contemporary churches, I have to admit that the Enlightenment yet casts its light on this new age. How quaint it is that the height of Christian sentiments in the earlier centuries were called the Dark Ages, and the secularized, rebellion against anything of mother’s or father’s today is called Enlightenment.
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