Coffee Hour: Piping Hot Religion News
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From the Editors
NOVEMBER 14, 2014 | We’ve got a lot on our minds this week—more than we could possibly dish over a just one cup of joe. But we’re thinking that the pending Grand Jury finding in Ferguson, MO with regard to the possibility of charges related to the killing of Michael Brown merits more than a passing mention. People of faith around the country and around the world are attending to what the outcome will be and what it will mean for race relations in the United States. Churches in Missouri and religious leaders throughout the country are preparing to minister in various ways—holding vigils, offering sanctuary, coordinating protests, providing food and water to protesters—in the aftermath of a decision that is politically and spiritually momentus. Pastor Renita Marie offered “A Collective Prayer for Ferguson” that is making its way through the interwebs.
Here on The Narthex, we’re surely not opposed to prayer. But our colleague Joshua Crutchfield, a regular contributor to the “Theology of Ferguson” collection here on Medium, suggests that acts of piety dissociated from concrete action are worse than useless. We’re sharing his powerful, passionate, and, we think, prophetic essay “Ferguson is America” by way of encouraging people of faith to turn our hearts, consciences, and actions toward uprooting the systematic injustices symbolized by the killing of Michael Brown. “The church has a critical role to play in this,” Crutchfield writes, and we suspect you won’t find what he has to say about that an easy read. Nor, we think, should it be. But it is exactly the kind of call to faith-filled action to which we believe a Church often overly-distracted by its own insitutional survival must respond.
The survival of churches has been on our mind a lot this week. Elizabeth has been keeping something of a morgue file of churches that are on their last legs, closing permanently, and being sold.
We’ve all recently learned that the Mars Hill megachurch empire will be dissolving, the result of which has been the sale of two Seattle properties, the dislocation of a ministry education program in partnership with Corban University, and the potential of closings among the remaining 13 Mars Hill satellites across the country should they not be able to absorb the financial responsibilities of maintaining independent churches.
That’s all small potatoes compared to the news out of the Archdiocese of New York, where Cardinal Timothy Dolan last week announced a restructuring that would result in the closure of some 31 churches, many holding valuable religious artworks and artifacts, not to mention the spiritual memories of hundreds of Catholics. This has to be a somewhat bitter pill for Catholics to swallow given the lavish episcopal digs parishioners have funded throughout the church, including Dolan’s own $30 million mansion.
The demolition and repurposing of once vital, physical markers on the American religious landscape promises to forever change how Christianity is practiced and what it symbolizes across the country. That point was brought home to us in particular by a story in Rolling Stone recently about a crowdsourcing campaign to save the steeple of what was once St. Mary’s Episcopal church in Athens, GA. The church, which was demolished in 1990 to make way for condos. was the site of the first R.E.M. concert. Its steeple is now an iconic architectural anchor for Nuçi’s Space, a suicide prevention and health resources center for Athens musicians, and local tourist landmark. On a video for the campaign on IndieGoGo, Scott Spillane of The Gerbils and Neutral Milk Hotel says that the renovated steeple will be “a meditative space where [Nuçi’s Space] clients can reflect on life.”
We’re at least as on board for suicide prevention as we are for prayer and reflection on life. Pour us a cup of each. But we do wonder to what extent the physical remains of churches—steeples, stained glass windows in upscale condos, worn oak pews in hipster brewpubs—function as spiritualized ciphers for a Church increasingly unplugged from the joys and sufferings of everyday life and the quotidian piety of ordinary people as they listen to music, share meals, and attempt to engage the needs of the world as it turns under their feet.
BUT: we’re not without hope. The head holy dude in Rome (or at least his coolest minions) continue to amaze us. It seems they’ve invited “People Have the Power” poet and musical icon Patti Smith to the Vatican for a Christmas concert.
Rock on with your bad self, @pontifex. Rock on.
Cover photo: Ozgur POYRAZOGLU, “Coffee Break,” 2008. CC 2.0 licensing.
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