Cross Creek Church and Cemetery

Now this is what I love, a cemetery dating back to the 1700s!  I found an online article about this place a year or two ago.  I'm always amazed at how old the countryside west and south of Pittsburgh is.  There are many old churches and cemeteries dating back to the 18th century--and most of them a little forgotten and forlorn, like Cross Creek United Presbyterian Church, in Washington County, which has many graves of Revolutionary War soldiers.  Mary Patterson--whose headstone is shown here--was buried in 1795.  Click on the photo to enlarge it.

The congregation of Cross Creek Church has been in existence since before the American Revolution.  But sadly, the great majority of these little country churches won't be around in another twenty years.  Despite their great history, their beauty, and their bank-calendar place in the American psyche, the country church is fading fast.  A handful of aging farmwives will not be able to maintain these buildings and cemeteries for very much longer.

The Cross Creek Church is pretty typical of rural Washington County churches: tall and redbrick with the sanctuary on the upper level and the various classrooms and social hall below, but not in a basement.  Notice that there is no cross on the cupola.  These old frontier Protestants tended to avoid all ornamentation and religious symbolism.  It's curious that this place is shuttered as if it's out of business, but it seems well enough maintained.  Do they actually close the shutters every Sunday after services?

 I have a theory as to why the oldest country churches around here are all Presbyterian.  Of course, the Presbyterian Church is the state Church of Scotland, and those old time Scotch-Irish settlers were steadfast Calvinists.  They believed that all things whatsoever were foreordained--war, famine, wealth, personal blessings, and losses.  All things.  And so, they went charging into the American back country before anyone else because they knew that their destiny was already set in stone.  If it was God's design that they were to be scalped by Indians, then so be it.  To them, God's will was always best.  In the words of Darth Vader, "It is your destiny!"

 Fatalism can be a comfortable worldview because it places all the blame for everything on a wise and merciful deity who allows us to suffer only so that good can come of it eventually--according to some mysterious plan that we humans cannot begin to know or grasp.   

 Of course, beliefs are always changing and growing.  There are few left today who hold fast to the idea of a puppetmaster deity who would allow a whole family of settlers to be tortured and massacred according to some secret plan, but who would also help me find my car keys when I lose them... 

I know a lot of Presbyterians, and none of them are fatalists like those old Scotch-Irish pioneers.  And yet, I almost wish I could believe that there was a master plan somewhere out there, governing the universe, guaranteeing that everything will be good in the end.  There's less peace of mind in a world of chance and happenstance.  Where would America be if not for the fatalists of bygone days?