Friday, May 3, 2019 | 2 a.m.
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Churches are burning, churches are exploding, churches are crumbling and standing deserted. It’s all just terribly sad.
No, you cannot draw a line between the accidental fire that gutted the Cathedral of Notre Dame and the terrorist bombings that targeted three churches and other buildings in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday, killing 253 people; nor can you connect the apparent hate-fueled arson that has charred black churches in the American South and the abandonment of churches nationwide amid declining attendance. They’re not related.
There is no global conspiracy to sabotage Christianity, nor is an Almighty Hand reaching out to shake up believers by destroying edifices their forebears erected as monuments to their beliefs.
Yet it is all undeniably unsettling to people who have long viewed such buildings with reverence — each considered a place of refuge, or a sanctuary, a word derived from the Latin sanctus, meaning “holy,” and formally designated as such by a ritual. We have called them houses of God, silly as we know that to be since the very idea of God implies omnipresence, neither restricted nor adequately represented by a human construct of stone, wood, brick or steel.
That’s not to say that the targeting of the Sri Lanka churches wasn’t intentional, just as was the March 15 slaughter at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, or the fires at three Louisiana churches, each of those last two incidents apparently fueled by white supremacism. The choice to wreak havoc and commit murder where many people gather to worship surely is made to maximally disrupt and terrorize us.
The destruction of churches, mosques and synagogues does that. Nobody who watched the Notre Dame spire collapse in flames was unmoved.
Many of us felt personal connection to that place. I cherish the memory of singing in Notre Dame with other members of Albany Pro Musica one sunny day in 2004, as a new altar was unveiled in the chancel. We had gathered initially deep beneath the great cathedral, then trudged up a winding, candle-lit stone staircase, each step indented by generations who came before us.
Whatever our religious beliefs, or lack of such, we know that the decline of these beloved spaces hurts, whether it’s a result of accident, attack or abandonment.
The latter is what we see most often. While almost three-quarters of Americans still claim to be Christian, church attendance and financial support has been in free fall for years, with funerals outpacing baptisms everywhere. Shrinking and resource-starved congregations can’t afford to maintain their buildings, so as many as 10,000 churches will close this year across the country.
Some buildings get a new life. The First Methodist Church of Saratoga Springs is becoming Universal Preservation Hall, a performing arts space. Overit Media, an Albany marketing firm, is based in the Gothic Revival building that was St. Teresa of Avila parish. In Troy, St. Francis de Sales is now the Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity house. Many Cohoes residents don’t realize their public library used to be a church. A couple of old churches in our region have been turned into full-service wedding chapels (bring your own officiant).
Some church buildings don’t survive. The Silliman Memorial Presbyterian Church in Cohoes is gone, replaced by a parking lot. On the former site of St. Patrick’s Church in Watervliet, there’s a supermarket.
But purposes other than worship often don’t appeal to the neighbors, like those who a few years back blocked a plan to turn St. Joseph’s Church in Albany’s Ten Broek Triangle into a brewery. Better to abut a decaying hulk than a taxpaying business that generates noisy crowds who would grab all the nearby on-street parking, it seems.
What’s often lost when church buildings outlive their sacred purpose, sadly, is the human connection and social services that churches had provided there. This is nothing short of tragic in neighborhoods desperately in need of the kind of care that a thriving congregation of faith can provide.
We might hope, then, that these old structures could be retrofitted as true community centers, inspired by people with altruistic goals, if not faith-based determination. An old sanctuary could become a gym where youngsters can play and grow, or a yoga and dance studio. Classrooms for Sunday school students could house classes for English language training for immigrants and business skills for would-be entrepreneurs, or for job training provided by community colleges and unions.
Sadness at the loss of churches isn’t useful. Action to replace at least part of their role could be.
Rex Smith is editor of the Albany (N.Y.) Times Union.
