God Land--It's complicated

Lenz, Lyz, God Land: A Story of Faith, Loss and Renewal in Middle America. Indiana University Press, 2019. viii + 151 pp.

A few years ago, a high school friend changed his relationship status on Facebook from "Married" to "It's complicated." Deluged by expressions of concern and support, he quickly changed it back. Everything was fine, he assured us, "But what marriage isn't complicated?"

Indeed, what marriage isn't? Or what church, or club, or town, or country? But there are a lot of forces out there, in and out of politics, demanding we choose between opposing alternatives, as if everything were binary and life were a true-false test.

When last Lyz Lenz appeared on this blog, she was writing about the uncertain future of rural and small town churches (Lenz 2016). That research is included in this book, which covers a range of religious and political phenomena, but with at least one common thread: We don't understand each other. Americans are by and large too comfortable with our stereotypes to understand across differences, which ultimately makes it hard to grasp even our own situations.

The Midwest is complicated:

These are the frustrations of the people who live here with the depictions of the Midwest. We are conservative, but also very liberal. We are farmers, but we are also business people. We are the place people are often from, and yet not the place to move to. We are the connective tissue between the coasts, but are also flown over. Resisting representation, caught between the extremes, we are seen as a void--a "great desolation" wrote the novelist O.E. Rolvaag. But that's the biggest mistake people have been making about this great middle place since America was first settled--assuming that it's empty. (50)

Religion is complicated:

When we talk about divide, we also have to talk about union--we have to talk about the messy meetings between strangers and the outpourings of love. We have to talk about strangers standing in pews next to one another, singing the same songs, saying the same prayers, offering one another handshakes of peace, sharing bread and wine--and even if all of these small rituals mean different things to each person, we are there together offering ourselves in messy and holy community. (55)

Even traditional Christianity as practiced in the rural Midwest is complicated: The heartland is full of faith, both expansive and hard. Both full of beauty and of fatalism. It's an open hand and a closed fist (33). Elsewhere, but I can't find the damn quote, Lenz notes that the elderly church ladies she interviews radiate disapproval, but even so if she were in trouble they would be quick to offer a meal, a ride to the hospital, whatever.

Occasionally we meet someone who successfully navigates across the complexity to meet the human on the other side in an act of love.

Several months after I moved out and filed for divorce, a friend of mine sends her father over to my house with a chair from her house.... Instead of bringing me the hand-me-down chair, however, her father brings me a brand-new chair he bought just for me. It's leather and it's gorgeous. And I'm shocked.

I've never met this man before. He's a local business owner and a very conservative Catholic. I worry that he might judge me... But two of his daughters have divorced, he tells me. He says in a year I'll be doing better than before... While he moves the chair in, he jovially remarks on the sign in my dining room that reads "Resist!" and I'm embarrassed by his generosity, my politics and poverty. The only thing I have to offer him is a box of Girl Scout cookies, which he accepts gladly. The next day he sends me a picture of the cookies cut up into letters that spell "Resist." (54)

A lot of the stories, however, find something other than this intuition of common humanity. Shrinking rural churches don't welcome the newcomers that could keep their institutions alive, because the newcomers are too different, so they shun and resent them. (The Asian American Reformed Church profiled in chapter 8 is established only after protracted struggles with white residents of the town and the national Christian Reformed denomination.) Instead of reaching across religious divides, they reinforce them. To a troubled world, they respond with myths, about the virtues of the flames they keep alive (see chapter 3 on nostalgia) and the iniquity of the other. One pastor's wife's shout of "City values are sinful!" abruptly ends discussion on that topic (108). And nothing gets better.

Looming throughout the book is the national presence that is Donald Trump, whose political success has fed off divisions while encouraging and deepening them. He's first mentioned on page 1, and last 2 1/2 pages from the end. Trump has become something of a national Rorschach test, allowing many in the Midwest to see a sympathetic protector of their threatened value system. The author meets a Muslim friend for coffee:

She tells me she never felt separate from the community here until the election [of Trump in 2016]. Seeing people she knows, people her husband works with, posting such hateful things on Facebook about Muslims in America and supporting that man, that man who is now the president--well, that really gave her pause. "These are the people I've had in my home. The people I've fed, and then I see them posting on Facebook like I am the enemy, like I am the problem." (122)

However, the white evangelical Christians who voted in such a huge proportion for Trump are preoccupied with their own grievances:

Two days after the attack in Pittsburgh [in 2018, when eleven worshipers at a synagogue were gunned down], one of my former pastors shared a story on Facebook, which alleged that ESPN edited out references to Jesus in a story about football player Tim Tebow. "There has never been a worse time to be a Christian," declared my former pastor. This pastor's feed is filled with dire warnings about how Christians in America are going to be banned, soon, if we are not vigilant.... A white Christian pastor, ignoring the violence against [blacks, Jews, and] Muslims while perpetuating a victim narrative for Tim Tebow, is part of the story of faith, most notably the stories we fail to tell. And these silences are inextricably linked to race, power, and class. (124)

Trump, too, is complicated: both the galoot who glibly mocks or ignores half of America, with his rhetoric as well as his ethics-free life, and the gallant defender of traditional moral values.

Reading God Land, I often felt whipsawed among all the contradictions and complexities. Maybe I too yearn for a little simplicity in this troubled world. But God Land is a little postmodernist miracle of a book, preaching that we oversimplify the world ("essentialize" in postmodernist lingo) at our peril. The world is complicated, and a clear-eyed faith can help us navigate complexity and conflict, addressing problems as one diverse-but-beloved community. (See Marohn 2015 & Proppe 2016 on this.) Nostalgic, insular faith might comfort us for the moment, but it's false comfort, ignoring complex realities and intensifying conflict. We need to see more, however confusing and uncomfortable this complicated world can be, and to do better.

Lyz Lenz (swiped from lyzlenz.com)

SEE ALSO:

Lyz Lenz "The Death of the Midwestern Church," Pacific Standard, 20 January 2016 [updated 2017]

The future of religious places (II)

Rural churches (here, Alice United Methodist Church in
Center Point, IA) face an uncertain future...

...but there are choices facing city churches, too,
like Cedar Rapids's Westminster Presbyterian

Two women, one in an urban area and one writing from the perspective of small towns, have just published perceptive essays raising issues of religion's relationship to place. Meanwhile, Faith and Form is out with their always-fascinating annual list of awards for religious art and architecture. The striking juxtaposition is also troubling for those (like me) who see an essential role for religious spaces in 21st century American places.

Lyz Lenz writes about the troubled future of small-town churches, including interviews with residents of Sidney (pop. 1138) and Ely (pop. 1776), Iowa. Citing the Association of Religious Data Archives, she notes the state has 500 fewer religious institutions than it did 20 years ago, mostly in rural areas. The Plymouth County Historical Museum has a whole floor dedicated to the remnants of rural churches. Drab old organs are huddled on the yellowing linoleum. One room holds stained glass windows, rectories, and murals retrieved from the small white churches now atrophying in cornfields alongside abandoned schools. In part this is due to declines in religious observance, and population shifts from rural to urban areas. But in towns like Ely, which is close enough to Cedar Rapids to be considered a suburb, a third factor is evident: the religiously observant have a wide choice of houses of worship in the nearby big city. And they're making those choices, reports Lenz. When our mobility enables us to get to a church that suits us, it also "leaves them more disconnected from the community where they live."

Meanwhile, in Minneapolis (pop. 400,070), there are over 30 houses of worship within a mile radius of Sara Joy Proppe's house. In contrast to the small towns which are losing population, Proppe's neighborhood is densely populated, with residents making use of excellent pedestrian infrastructure. She looks at whether churches in the area offer inviting places for passers-by to rest. Citing scripture that values rest and sitting, she also notes a place to sit provides an opportunity for meeting our neighbors and the stranger. This is a vital component to actually loving our neighbors.... Putting in some seating is not a panacea for making better communities, but it is a step in the right direction. It is a way to invite others to rest, to participation, to value neighbors and strangers. And it all can start with something as simple as a bench. She observes a variety of orientations (see the link below for pictures). The fourth pictures in the two sets offer sharp contrasts: One has [a] vast expanse of lawn with so much unrealized opportunity. The mostly blank front façade of the building only exacerbates my pain; the other offers a garden... a Little Free Library, and some seating on the arc of the garden path. Having a place to sit is a measure (albeit not the only one) of how oriented a church is to the neighborhood around it.

Which brings us to the Faith and Form awards. In contrast to last year's set, which included the neighborly Christ Church of Cambridge, Massachusetts, this year's bunch tend to the overwhelming. They are visually striking, and artistically imaginative, but their size and shape mean they're unlikely to play well with others on the street. The first three American church structures (as opposed to buildings on academic campuses) listed are:

1. The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Central Oregon, relocated to the outskirts of Bend at 61980 Skyline Ranch Rd. It is truly a lovely building, and sits comfortably in its woody surroundings, but as far as I can determine is walkable from nowhere.
2. St. Pius X Chapel and Prayer Garden, 6666 Spanish Fort Blvd, New Orleans. Maybe it's the angle of the photo, but it looks forbidding. I like the church next door better; it has a wide double front door that opens towards the sidewalk. The neighborhood, near Lake Ponchartrain, has an odd layout, but seems centered on the church/school campus, which may make this an exception to my point.
   
3. St. Edward Catholic Church, 5203 River Road North, Keizer, Oregon. River Road looks like a serious stroad, and the cross street Sandy Drive is a dead end, albeit the Walk Score is 74 so there might be more than meets the eye. There are benches outside for seating, which we've established is a plus.

This year's prize winners continue a positive trend towards use of natural light in the design of sacred spaces. Most of them, however, appear to reflect what Eric O. Jacobsen (2012: 189-190) calls insular churches (as opposed to embedded chuches like the ones described by Lenz and the ones Proppe likes). Typically built after 1945 in suburban developments, insular churches sit on large lots and feature large parking areas onto which their main doors open. They still can and do engage in vital ministry. A new facility on the edge of town gives congregations limitless choice to design their worship space to maximize natural light, sustainability and participation. But they miss an opportunity to help make and maintain neighborhoods, with all they imply for connecting and empowering people.

Jacobson calls churches to re-invigorate the idea of parishes, where churches are integrated into and minister to the neighborhoods around them.

 I don't expect to see very many churches draw the majority of their congregations from those who live within walking distance. However, I do believe that most churches and members of churches could benefit from learning to think in terms of parish....

I think that it would be a highly productive exercise for a church to make a regular practice of defining its geographical footprint and then doing strategic thinking in terms of the needs and opportunities presented within that footprint. Such a practice would be more accurate and helpful the more it was informed by hands-on local knowledge. That is to say, the more that church members and leadership actually spent time within the footprint talking to people and observing with all their senses, the greater would be their understanding of where God is at work in their parish. (2012: 194-195)

In the three examples above, there doesn't seem to be much of a neighborhood to integrate into. Lenz quotes sociologist Paul Lasley on the lost functions of community-centered churches (and small town schools): There is no glue holding these communities together... and it’s making us forget how to neighbor. As the 21st century forces us towards interdependence, insularity is a luxury we can't afford. We need embedded churches, among other elements of human-scaled civil society. Faith and Form might consider that as a design award category.

The low wall around Immaculate Conception Church, Cedar Rapids,
will be an asset to what may once again become a walkable area

SOURCES
Michael J. Crosbie, "2015 International Awards Program for Religious Art and Architecture," Faith and Form 48:4, http://faithandform.com/feature/2015-awards-program/ 
Eric O. Jacobsen, The Space Between: A Christian Engagement with the Built Environment (Baker Academic, 2012)
Lyz Lenz, "The Death of the Midwestern Church," Pacific Standard, 20 January 2016, http://www.psmag.com/books-and-culture/the-death-of-the-midwestern-church 
Sara Joy Proppe, "Sit On It," Strong Towns, 21 January 2016, http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/1/21/sit-on-it ...includes additional links on the value of sit-able places

EARLIER POSTS
"CR Churches," 20 July 2015 [historic churches in Oakhill-Jackson neighborhood of Cedar Rapids]
"A Win for Today--A Strategy for the Future?" 14 May 2015 [a Cedar Rapids church in a core neighborhood expands its parking lot but saves a historic building]
"The Future of Religious Spaces," 8 January 2015 [thoughts on the 2014 award-winners]