A Different Way of Thinking About Church by Michael E. DeSanctis

Hanging in a prominent corner of the home my wife and I share is a German-language temperance-themed poster published well over a century ago by the Providence Lithograph Company, a business named for the city in Rhode Island where it once produced educational materials for many of the country’s larger Protestant denominations. Our guess is that it was meant for display in the Sunday School classrooms of German-speaking Lutheran parishes throughout the US, its text cast in a typeface known as Fraktur. My wife and I received the object as a housewarming gift from friends with business ties to Germany in whose own home we’d admired it for years.

Much of the poster’s charm lies in the wealth of interpretive possibilities it offers viewers, a feature common to art of its age and kind made for mass consumption. Dominating its design is the image of a middle-aged man standing before a church, through whose window we see a group of choirboys singing from hymnals. The boys, smartly dressed in jackets and bowties, are gathered in a space aglow with light from a brass chandelier. They epitomize order, piousness, and youthful innocence, the lily plants piled high around them suggestive of Easter décor or the beauty more broadly associated with the place and practice of Christian worship.

Different in every way are the circumstances surrounding the figure of the male onlooker, whose rumpled appearance make him immediately identifiable as someone down on his luck.  His head is bowed and hat removed in subtler gestures of reverence, possibly harkening back to the habits of his own boyhood. We find him alone in the shadow of the church’s thick walls, the fence on which he’s placed a hand evoking the form and function of a chancel rail. To this forlorn soul—an abuser of alcohol by implication—the sacred sights and sounds emanating from within the church are “off limits,” a point further reinforced by the nearly leafless thicket that further separates him from the structure.

Immediately beneath this pictorial information lies the poster’s Mäßigkeits Lektion, or “temperance lesson,” in typographical form. “Don’t fill yourself with wine,” it reads in loose translation, “[for this] will result in a disordered character.” Barely visible in the space between the larger and smaller of these texts are citations of Bible verses reminding more astute readers of God’s sovereignty over “the wicked and the good” (Prov 15:3) and disdain for drunkenness (Eph 5:18).

Wine of an entirely different kind, along with life-giving bread, are, presumably, available to those whose lives are more rightly ordered than that of the man pictured. Should they fall into excessive drinking, however, they forfeit their place at the spiritual banquet Christ himself promises and are consigned to the outskirts of the flock he shepherds (cf. 1 Pet 5:2).

In many ways, the poster represents an artifact of the past, a period expression of Christian morality that, for all its colorful presentation, comes across as strictly black and white. It captures the ruin one can make of a life, but not much in the way of remedy as Christ conveys it through his church to those in need. In this sense, the poster challenges both committed Christians and those dismissive of Christianity and religion in general to judge whether it reliably depicts how faith communities function today. Much about religious practice in America has changed in the time since the poster was published, after all, owing in part to advances in the areas of pastoral psychology, moral theology, and social outreach. The plight of alcoholics and others suffering from addictive behaviors once blamed on deficiencies of character is better understood than it once was by the pastoral staffs of churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples. The sheer complexity of the human person as an amalgam of mind, body, and spirit is something persons in all aspects of public ministry now regard with care when assessing the needs of those seeking their assistance.     

Key events in my own religious upbringing make me sympathetic to the thinking of those convinced that “organized religion” fosters little more than “God clubs” comprised of members who like nothing more than to determine who’s “in” or “out” of their circle. Churchy people are essentially “segregators” and “commandment-enforcers,” the criticism goes, quick to ostracize anyone failing to abide by their rules but forgetful of the universal rule of mercy and forgiveness by which they hope God judges their own behaviors.

As a young boy, I was led to wonder whether there wasn’t some truth to this line of thought  the first time my parents pointed out to me and my siblings the section of a Catholic cemetery in my hometown reserved for the burial of murderers, victims of suicides, and others judged unfit to sleep alongside those who presumably died in a “state of grace.” The thought returned on the occasion my father attempted to enroll us in a Catholic grade school in town attached to a predominately Irish American parish. The most we could hope for, he was told, was inclusion on a “waiting list,” which we all took as a slight against our family’s Italian origins. It arose, as well, each time I attended church services with my kid brother, a Tourette syndrome sufferer, and witnessed the condemnation directed toward him by our fellow worshipers for his involuntary ticks and vocal outbursts.   

My adult self is able to overlook these early brushes with the limits of religion and “the religious” by seeing communities of faith for what they are: groups of human beings trying their best to decipher the meaning of life, to negotiate the terror of mortality, and to do good when evil so often seems easier and more enticing. Churchgoers, I’ve learned, stumble through the darkness of earthly existence as readily as others but cling more tightly, perhaps, to any glimmer of divine light that comes their way. If given a chance, they’ll admit to their brokenness and need for God’s providence, the origin of their willingness to provide for others they recognize as being in the same boat.

Religious communities in this country, for example, provide the majority of meeting places used by chapters of Alcoholics Anonymous and other support and recovery groups. They stage clothing drives, maintain homeless shelters and food pantries, and throw themselves behind the causes of the marginalized. Jewish congregations look to the book of Deuteronomy (15:4, 7) as a source of their tzedakah or solemn commitment to philanthropy. Muslims defer to zakat, one of the so-called “Five Pillars” of their faith, which requires them to distribute 2.5 percent of their wealth annually to those in need. Likewise, Christians find in the so-called “Olivet Discourses” of Jesus reason to believe that by supporting “the least of [their] brothers and sisters” they succeed in reverencing God (Matt 25:40).

Do religious congregations make mistakes? Certainly they do—enormous ones, as history makes clear, so vast is the human capacity for selfishness and errors in judgment. The marvel of these groups, however, lies in the frequency with which they actually succeed in doing good despite their shortcomings. These days, should a door stand between them and someone like the man in the poster I’ve described, it’s likely open, any hymn-singing they do strictly of the welcoming kind. They serve in their imperfect ways as sources of encouragement and regeneration to others, dwelling places for the world-weary built of flesh and bone, and signs of beauty and grace to a culture in need of both. ♦

Michael E. DeSanctis, Ph.D. is retired professor of fine arts and theology at Gannon University in Erie, Pennsylvania. He writes widely on Catholic church architecture and serves as a liturgical designer and consultant.

Image: Rique Drone / Unsplash