07-06-2020
Losing the Faith...
I have a love-hate relationship with organized religion. In my youth, I was fully embedded in Roman Catholicism. That is, I was until I was 12. It was at that point that I approached my mother and let her know that I would no longer be attending church. When asked why, I told her how I watched the Priest speak of loving thy fellow man from the pulpit, yet gossip and bad-mouth various parishioners on the front steps not ten minutes later after the service. My (very wise!) mother considered my response for a moment, then nodded her head. Even at that age, I had a very strong sense of actions speaking louder than words, and a healthy loathing of hypocrisy.
After that, we stopped attending church regularly, but the next Christmas Eve, the whole family decided we'd go to midnight mass just for the tradition. The priest at the service cemented my conviction about the hypocrisy of religion by spending the whole sermon not welcoming his parishioners, but berating them (and us!) for only showing up on Christmas. Well alrighty then, message received - I'll never show up again.
That's not to say I'm not interested in religion, and I'm happy to discuss theology at length, as long as you're open-minded and not rabidly dogmatic. Funnily enough, despite my disdain for religion itself, I absolutely am drawn to the history and architecture of religious infrastructure.
When I passed the church in the picture above, I immediately jammed on the brakes and turned around for closer look. The edifice sat on the southeastern corner of the junction of two dirt roads pretty much in the middle of the Canadian prairies. There wasn't another building for miles in any direction. I thought about some missionary, fervent in his beliefs and desire to build a community of souls to save. "Build it and they will come" he most likely thought. But they didn't.
For me, this image is a visual metaphor for my own personal journey, as well as today's growing exodus away from religious organizations. The brooding skies and the angle from which I took the photo help convey the oppressive nature of religion - the Church looms over the perpetually guilty viewer, imposing its endless directives, admonitions and fiery threats of eternal damnation. Yet the dilapidated form is a juxtaposition, belying it's historical stranglehold on human society and conscience. The literal decay represents religion's waning hold on mankind - the shell is worn down, locked up, abandoned, forgotten. Yet still it persists on its corner on the Prairies, clinging desperately to its existence like a distant memory of a nightmare.
Finally, the one missing panel in the door irresistibly draws you forward to satisfy your curiosity. What's it like inside? What could possibly have been the attraction? You approach slowly... cautiously... perhaps even fearfully, imagining the wonders, angels or demons that might be within. Summoning your courage, you decide to go through with it and look inside.
But you'll have to get on your knees to do it.