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Country Churches

The Source

I mourn the demise of the small country church. As congregations consolidate, diminish or completely fold up and the mega-churches provide a spotless new home for thousands of American churchgoers, the humble country chapel of yore is beginning to go the way of the Mastodon and the 8-track tape. Let’s face it, you can drive about anywhere your heart and the gods of OPEC will allow on Sunday morning and it’s no longer necessary to find a church within your horse’s walking endurance. We have choices and in most cases we’ve chosen to up-scale our spiritual experience. I’m glad I’ve been blessed to have at least memories of a few country churches in our area. My first and most vivid memory is of South Prairie Presbyterian, located in the Fishhook area. All these churches were one-room affairs and South Prairie was no exception to that custom. You walked in the front door and you were in church. No anteroom, no foyer, no pastor’s study, no Sunday School rooms or lounges. It was the church, the whole church and nothing but the church (so help me, God!). The pulpit was distinguished only by a six-inch bit of raised platform and an oaken podium stained by hundreds of glasses of water programmed to condense their moisture by decades of dry-mouthed preachers. A strand of number nine wire stretched across the front of the sanctuary with homemade curtains which could be pulled back to section the room off for Sunday School. A small, hand-held bell sat on the preacher’s perch to call the faithful to their seats and there was a jar in which you dutifully chipped in your change every time your birthday rolled around. And of course there was no toilet…at least indoors. Presbyterians have long prided themselves on being made of strong-willed Scottish stock and nothing proved that more than ducking out the back door during the silent prayer, cutting the first path through the snow to the outhouse and then dragging your frozen bottom back into the pew somewhere between the back row and the final hymn. The Jacksonville area has its own precious collection of small country churches. .. Asbury Methodist out on Lake J’ville should be put on some sort of national “Don’t tear this one down!” list, as it sits nestled between a small cove and its own church cemetery. Literberry Baptist still maintains its building and it you want heat, you stoke the stove. Several small churches still dot the spiritual landscape south of Jacksonville, and of course our Prairieland Heritage site has lovingly preserved the Liberty church as a fitting accompaniment to the organization’s other collections of yesteryear. I recently spoke in a delightful little chapel nestled into the side of the bluff near the LaGrange Locks. If you were the thirtieth person to enter the church you’d have to stand. I’m not sure, but I think the piano may have had 44 keys. Their New Testaments had only Mark, Luke, Matt and Joe. Okay, I’m kidding about that part, but it was one wee house of worship. One of the most fascinating days of my life was the morning I rode the back roads from Jacksonville to Springfield with Phil Decker, former Mac professor and expert on local architecture. Phil could look at the shape of a building and pinpoint the origin of its architects. “In general,” he’d say, “the wrap-around seating shows a southern influence. If it’s a straight-ahead configuration then you know those folks probably came from New England.” He said that the country churches were usually built to house the congregation of that day with little thought to future expansion. One of the most interesting country chapels I’ve ever visited was located near Sandoval, Illinois. Accessible only via a gravel road, the one-room sanctuary had no padding on its pews, only rudimentary lighting, and not only no indoor toilet but no running water of any kind in the building. They’d asked me to come play a ancient piano that had arrived shortly after the Nina, Pina, and Santa Maria crashed onto our shores, and the minister used a rickety old music stand for his lectern. No hymnbooks. Strange. Do these folks have everything memorized? Then the preacher walked to the back wall, pressed a button, and a digital computer screen began to slowly descend, I looked back to see a fully-equipped computer station in the back of the room, and a PowerPoint presentation of the day’s songs and sermon appeared. Blessed are the strong of bladder, for they shall inherit the technology!