Georgia
November 2012
You know that this area of the country is in the heart of the “Bible Belt.” If you don’t know what the Bible Belt is, hark this helpful definition…
an area in the southern United States where folks choose to believe in the literal accuracy of the Bible, an area characterized by fervent religious fundamentalism
Put together a large number of fundamentalists and what do you get? Churches. A whole pantload of churches. The hiking trail we use to reach Brasstown Bald, the high point of Georgia, is known for its switchbacks. We don’t know which are more around here, the churches or the switchbacks. We decide not to count either, but it’s a hell of a lot. Whoops, sorry. It’s a heck of a lot.
On the drive to trailhead, we watch church after church fly by outside our windshield. I sense a disturbance in the force. Could it be that I am an atheist? Hmm… Nope. It has nothing to do with my beliefs. It’s the church steeples. Something is off. Hey, they don’t fit! They are the wrong size or the wrong architectural proportion for the churches that are under them.
Here’s a cute little church. On top is a steeple, short and squat, way too wide for its proportion to the building, like a carbuncle. Here’s another church, quite large. Skinny and tall steeple sticking way up in the sky. Proportions like a lollypop, upside down. Good for candy, not good for a church.
Which gets me thinking; Does the steeple come separate from the church? I would doubt it. I’ve never built a church, nor ordered one to be built, but I would assume that when you do, you get your church, and the steeple would be thrown in for free. Hard sayin’, not knowin’.
When it was time to attach the 408-foot spire to the top of the new (not-a-church) One World Trade Center in New York, they floated it across the New York Harbor to get to lower Manhattan. It came in a bunch of pieces. If you’ve seen the pictures, you know that it looks just right on top of that tall building. Here? Steeples too small for the building they are attached to, or too large, or some in the wrong place, unbalancing the architecture.
I wonder, is there a steeple catalog? A steeple store? Steeples ‘R’ Us? Perhaps the moisture of floating it in a harbor would morph a steeple into the right size. Steeple rebate, anyone?