Journey to the past
Over the last little bit, I've been taking my camera out with me more often, and one of the things that is just fascinating is the number of churches in Chicago. Most of the churches around here are a testament to a time in Chicago long past - for example, just in the few streets around where I grew up (10 minute walk, tops, to hit all of them), there was a Catholic church, a Swedish Lutheran church, a German Lutheran Church, a Norwegian Lutheran church, and a Norwegian Free Church. By the time that I was growing up though, the whole Scandinavian flavor of the area was long gone - if the original congregations still existed, they had long since shed their "immigrant" ways, and others had been sold to other various groups. Yet, sometimes, one can still see something that hearkens back to those days long past.
The Norwegian Free Church is here:
How this church once looked
It is amazing to me, too, how it was so important for the people who came over to this country not only to be able to be free to worship in the way that they wished, but also that these institutions - these churches - be set up to facilitate that. Furthermore, the churches served as a place where all these people - thrown together by circumstance - could come together to truly be a community.
Then again, in areas such as this, it is telling, too, that there were so many churches in such a tiny space. And I suppose that there was a sense of community within those parishes, but, in contrast to other places where there wasn't such a variety, that it would be easy for there to be some sort of community within the congregations which didn't necessarily extend to the outside community at large.
In these days, where so much seems to be going completely haywire when it comes to a "civil" society, it seems as if this idea of community is as desperately needed as when the immigrants who built these churches came over a century ago. One may argue that it doesn't necessarily have to be a church* that is the pillar of the community, but I don't believe that there is any other organization that can provide the same sort of support and hope to a person than a place which is meant to inspire and be a constant reminder of the Glory to which we are capable of partaking.
*yes, I know saying that isn't politically correct.
The Norwegian Free Church is here:
How this church once looked
It is amazing to me, too, how it was so important for the people who came over to this country not only to be able to be free to worship in the way that they wished, but also that these institutions - these churches - be set up to facilitate that. Furthermore, the churches served as a place where all these people - thrown together by circumstance - could come together to truly be a community.
Then again, in areas such as this, it is telling, too, that there were so many churches in such a tiny space. And I suppose that there was a sense of community within those parishes, but, in contrast to other places where there wasn't such a variety, that it would be easy for there to be some sort of community within the congregations which didn't necessarily extend to the outside community at large.
In these days, where so much seems to be going completely haywire when it comes to a "civil" society, it seems as if this idea of community is as desperately needed as when the immigrants who built these churches came over a century ago. One may argue that it doesn't necessarily have to be a church* that is the pillar of the community, but I don't believe that there is any other organization that can provide the same sort of support and hope to a person than a place which is meant to inspire and be a constant reminder of the Glory to which we are capable of partaking.
*yes, I know saying that isn't politically correct.