It always saddens me to see old church buildings that have been turned into restaurants, bars, concert halls, museums, or condos. See The Cultural Conversion Of Cast-Off Churches.

On “Kitchen Nightmares,” Gordon Ramsey, that chef I have been hyping who slaps failing restaurants and cooks into shape, took on an eatery that had once been a church. He, at least, for all his bleeped-out language, was strangely respectful of the once-sacred space. He used the confessionals to make the errant cooks confess their sins against their vocations (Q: “What was the worst thing you’ve ever done in the kitchen?” A: “I dropped a piece of meat on the floor and just put it back on the plate.”) After he forced the owner to clean the filthy kitchen and buy some decent equipment, he brought in local clergymen to pray and to bless the kitchen.

To be sure, new church buildings are often designed to look like shopping malls, corporate offices, or convention centers. I see no problem with using them for the purposes that their appearance suggests anyway. (But is there a problem even there?) The old buildings getting abandoned tend to have the sacred built into them: they typically follow a cruciform floor plan (expressing that worshippers gather in the Cross), are adorned with built-in Christian symbols that cannot be removed (shapes evoking the Trinity, Crosses everywhere, lines sweeping upward to evoke a sense of transcendence), the tripartite structure of the Hebrew Temple (a gathering place for all; a holy place for worship; the holy-of-holies area that is the altar). So turning all of that–or ignoring all of that–to turn the building into a night club just seems, literally, a profanation.

Wouldn’t it better to just tear these buildings down than to turn what was once “sacred space” towards “profane” uses? Or is this a wrong distinction? Do these new uses for a church building instead bring the sacred into the secular, turn everything sacred, and demonstrate God’s reign over all of life?

According to the polity of the United Methodist Church, there is no separate denomination for each country, nor a hierarchical transnational organization. Rather, Methodist congregations from around the world are on an equal footing. Their representatives get together every four years for a General Conference to decide on policies for all Methodists. In the General Conference currently going on in Fort Worth, a coalition of AFRICAN Methodists with American conservatives is thwarting efforts from the normally-liberal Methodists to take their church even further to the left.

See Methodists Struggle To Reflect Diversity. Once again, the Africans are the ones upholding Christian orthodoxy against the churches that once sent them missionaries.

Also, what do you think of the Methodist polity? Could that be a model for an international synod of, say, Lutheran churches?

HT: Graham Walker

Gary MacDougal, who works with poor people to help them climb out of poverty, writes about just how harmful Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s message is, and not just because he hurts Barack Obama or even because he preaches racism. He and preachers like him proclaim the pervasive message that the poor people in their congregations have no hope, that they are doomed to be perpetual victims, and that their problems are always white people’s fault. This worldview, he says from experience, paralyzes people who need, instead, encouragement and prevents them from improving their lives.

Imagine getting up each morning to go to work in a society that doesn’t want you, doesn’t respect you and seeks to hold you back. Your spiritual leader has told you this, after all. With powerful rhetoric, Wright has asserted, for instance, that white America sees black women as useful only for their bodies. If this is the message you got from your mentor, would you expect that you could succeed? Would you try very hard, if at all?

Through my work with the Illinois governor’s task force on human services reform and its efforts to reduce welfare dependency, I have encountered misguided community “leaders” like Wright who tell their followers, for example, that the job market is stacked against them and that the jobs that are available aren’t good enough — that they are entitled to more. The underlying message: You can’t win because of who you are, regardless of what you do.