By John McClester
Buffalo, NY – It's true. Buffalo New York is the coldest spot on Lake Erie. Alright, the hard science says it ain't so, but that $279 million paid to Buffalo by the New York State Power Authority whispers that ice boom is chilling something. Maybe it's the Presbyterians.
Among the tangent circles of institutional Christianity we Presbyterians are notorious for a piety so cold the A line of the Buffalo Sabers could skate across it. We'd like to be friendly, but we only get about half-way before we're exhausted and have to turn back. Not surprisingly Presbyterian Churches are shrinking in membership like a pair of wool long-johns in a dryer's melt cycle. Because our institutional heydays in Western New York are long gone we're now beneath the media radar and I don't have to read about Presbyterian Churches closing every other day on the front page of the newspaper. I'll bet there are some religious leaders here in Western New York who wish they could be Presbyterian so they could hide out with us, media invisible. Maybe that could be a marketing strategy for us, Become a Presbyterian and disappear.
Truth be told though, it is disappearing that frightens us. It is a fine thing that Mount St. Joseph's Academy now runs their school from what used to be Central Presbyterian Church in Buffalo. It makes good sense that the former Pierce Avenue Presbyterian Church in Niagara Falls is now home to the United Church Covenant of Grace Ministries. All the same we are sad. Closing a church means that many people literally lose their place on the religious landscape. What will it take to find new religious turf? Do I have the energy for a daunting pilgrimage, a long march that demands I leave behind my cherished memories? Is it possible for me to be religious and a stranger, both?
I was sitting beside a friend in one of our numberless Presbyterian meetings. He was a preacher waiting to be called to the front of the room where in less time than it takes me to read this essay he and his congregation's relationship would be dissolved, his ministry ended, the church had been sold. Before he was called forward and summarily given his leave he slipped me a note. You will of course recall, it read, that Huckleberry Finn attended his own funeral. Yes, I thought, but where is our Aunt Polly waiting to welcome us back to life with cuffs and kisses ? [Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007 (orig. pub. 1876): 92ff.]
Surely we are mistaken to think of churches' closing as religion going out of business, but there are many Western New Yorkers who feel like we have been given a spiritual pink slip. We ve learned from our history that we cannot find another job breaking open sand castings, the foundry is closed. But where can we stand to be sure our prayers go to heaven when the church is sold for an apartment building?
Our conundrum is actually an ancient one, a question faced thousands of years ago by the ancestors of our Jewish friends. In one of the oldest passages in the Hebrew Scriptures we read, "And you shall make response before the LORD your God, 'A wandering Aramean was my father; and he went down into Egypt and sojourned there'" [Deuteronomy 26: 5]. Who would have thought that in our wandering around, possessing not so much as a city lot, that placeless we would be more likely to run into God than when we were hunkered down in a permanent location, a good solid roof over our heads. It seems the highest flying prayers are those offered when we are on the road.
It is a short walk from St. Elizabeth's Church on Grant Street to Assumption Church on Amherst, the distance is not far. But even this warm year that walk might have been a cold one the day St. Liz closed and her parishioners made their pilgrimage to Assumption. It is surprising how cold the walks can be in Buffalo. Maybe the answer is that we should wander longer, walk further, bundle up and keep moving. That's the way some of God's people fight off the cold.
Listener-Commentator John McClester lives and works in Buffalo.
Click the "listen" icon above to hear the commentary now or use your podcasting software to download it to your computer or iPod.