Old Stone Church, Greenwood Furnace

Sacred architecture has always fascinated me.  And I've always been particularly intrigued by the old stone church at Greenwood Furnace State Park in central Pennsylvania.  It once functioned as a regular church, back when there was a village built around the old "furnace."  It then fell into a long season of disuse, and now it is used as a church again but only in the summertime, when campers can attend services.  It's run by the local Methodist ministerial association--or whatever.

The stark simplicity seen in these photos has a whole different feel when you're actually standing inside the church.  In pictures, it looks a little dull, homespun, uninspired and uninspiring.  But in real life, there's a real peace and tranquility to this place--which surely used to ring loud with the Methodist revivalism of the 19th century.  There were musty Methodist hymnals in the pews and paraphrased versions of the Bible.

Click on this photo to enlarge it.  I loved the scene with the two pianos, the bottle of water on a stool, the meadow just outside the window.  It's a still life of rural American spirituality.  On the piano bench, unseen, one of the old red hymnals was laid open on its face to a pair of hymns I had never heard of.

It's the attempt to differentiate the sacred from the secular that I regard as admirable in so many rural churches.  They're clearly simple places with down-to-earth people, unpretentious, perhaps less educated.  But they still go to the effort of rounding the top of this window into a gentle arch, just to remind you that this place is not your kitchen, or your barn, or even your fancy parlor.  This place is sacred.  It's a church, a place set aside from daily life, a place whose presence in the community is meant to remind us of the best ideals of humankind, a place pointing toward goodness, truth, and beauty.  Of course, churches are fallible human institutions, and especially in the age of Trump, their moral authority is more than a little tattered.  But at least their physical presence aspires to represent better things, the noblest elements of humankind.  

All church mice are poor, but none poorer than the ones at Greenwood Furnace Church where they're desperate enough to eat paper.  (I was known as The Snowbelt Parson in years past.  For a reference to eating books, see Ezekiel 3:1 and Revelation 10:10.)

I lingered long in this place.  It has a welcoming, comforting feel to it--despite the cold whiteness of the walls and pews.  I doubt I'd want to hear anything coming from a rural Methodist pulpit.  Their denomination has recently come out strongly homophobic, and they're conducting witch hunts to purge their ranks of gay and gay-friendly clergy.  But it was a nice place to be alone for awhile.