At the landmark Second Presbyterian Church on the Near South Side, a priceless collection of stained-glass windows, including the largest array of Tiffany windows in a Chicago church, has deteriorated to the point of collapse.
That would be the proper Christian response, at least according to one line of thinking.
After all, churches are human edifices that suck up money, time and energy. Piling brick upon brick, then gilding it all with the finest decoration the collection plate can buy, is neither a purely spiritual pursuit, nor the kind of social mission many see as Christianity’s calling.
The great cathedrals of the Middle Ages were handy symbols for Reformation leaders who objected to the gross concentration of money and power in the hands of the church. In an interesting echo last month, protesters decried the opening of a new $50 million Roman Catholic think tank in Washington, D.C., claiming that the money would have been more righteously spent feeding the poor and housing the homeless.
More to the point, newspaper columnist Tom Ehrich recently wrote that neighborhood church buildings themselves lead Christians down the wrong path.
“I have come to believe church buildings do us more harm than good,” Ehrich wrote this week. “We say we do it for God, but Jesus called people away from property, not toward it.”
Ehrich is a newspaper reporter turned Episcopal priest who now writes a regular column for the Religion News Service (which is a little like being the Marlboro Man turned anti-smoking activist who still sneaks a little puff now and then–but that’s another column).
Ehrich makes a solid argument: Jesus was a trained carpenter, but he didn’t waste any time hammering away on a steeple for his new church.
In fact, Ehrich would probably object to my opening reference to the “landmark Second Presbyterian Church.” A church, his column explained, is not a building, not a landmark, but a gathering of people.
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James Roghair felt that same clear conviction once.
“As a new pastor coming out of seminary in the late 1960s, I had the impression that God’s people could probably most appropriately worship in a tent, without all the trappings around us,” said Roghair.
Now, as pastor of Second Presbyterian Church, it does not look quite so clear-cut to him.
“We as human beings live through our institutions,” Roghair said. “Some people are drawn to this particular church by the beauty that it has. Some people are drawn to it in order to be a part of the tradition that it represents, to be stewards of it.”
“There are such things as sacred places, or sacred spaces, that people recognize. Tribal people had places in nature. Not everybody finds the same places sacred, but some people find that here,” he said.
Roghair also knows what a burden a church building can be. A small congregation in a troubled neighborhood, Second Presbyterian came close to shutting its doors in the 1970s. Even now, though revived from 30 members to 150, the congregation has trouble supporting the building, with its museum-quality Arts and Crafts glass, murals and sculptures.
Enter Inspired Partnerships, the non-profit, non-sectarian organization that gives Chicago churches cut-rate consultation on how to preserve and maintain their buildings–not only aesthetically, but as centers for ministry and outreach in the community.
Inspired Partnerships has organized a workshop in stained-glass preservation for which Second Presbyterian will be the classroom. Next week, for five straight days, stained-glass guru Arthur Femenella will teach 10 other artisans his trade.
In the process, the group will perform up to $10,000 worth of restoration work, at nominal cost to Second Presbyterian. It will not be a complete fix, but it should stabilize the windows.
On Oct. 18, Inspired Partnerships will highlight the glass at Second Presbyterian as part of a three-church tour of stained-glass windows in Chicago, along with the windows of St. James Chapel in the Archbishop Quigley Preparatory Seminary and St. James Episcopal Cathedral. From a purely civic and aesthetic point of view, the preservation of these buildings deserves applause.
But spiritually, is it worth the trouble?
For those who believe they have a firm hold on the message of God, and believe it says to travel light, perhaps not.
But many people, of many faiths, find the question more complex than that. For them God is found and praised not only in words and charity, but in music, in paintings, even in soaring buildings with glorious windows. In a glint of light, they see inspiration and evidence of a community–a church–that joins believers across generations and millennia.
For them, a balance sheet cannot capture the way in which a stained-glass window makes the church richer.