A fire at a historical Chevy Chase ward raises the concern: What is Mormon neighborhood now?

(RNS)– On Monday afternoon (Nov. 20), a meetinghouse of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints increased in flames in Chevy Chase, Maryland. I found out about this when 2 individuals in my Facebook feed who had fond memories of that chapel published their unhappiness and stress and anxiety. According to regional CBS news outlet WUSA9the fire led to a partial collapse of the structure and needed more than 100 firemens to stop the flames.

Thank paradises, nobody was eliminated or hurt. There has actually been more than $10 million in damage, and it’s not yet clear whether the structure can be brought back or will require to be changed completely.

The reason for the fire had actually not been launched since this writing, however none of the report discuss nasty play.

I do not have any individual history with that chapel, however it dates from the 1950s, the very same years as my own ward’s meetinghouse, so I’ve been considering how ravaged I would feel if something comparable taken place here. There’s a lot history in these structures, impacting many lives. I understand that in regards to history, a church that is 70-something years of ages has absolutely nothing on a church that is, state, 700. In Mormonism, so much of day-to-day life has actually taken place in these structures– specifically back then. The Chevy Chase structure, and my own ward structure, have actually hosted exceptional efforts at creating neighborhood.

The 1950s marked a distinct historic minute in the development of the church, especially in the Washington, D.C., location. Those were heady days. Ezra Taft Benson was taking his area as President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s secretary of farming, the greatest post ever held by a Mormon in nationwide life. Almost anything appeared possible for our young religious beliefs on the relocation. In regards to the media and its public image, the church was delighting in a sort of golden age in between the anti-polygamy protection of the late 19th and extremely early 20th centuries and the crucial treatments of the church’s handling of race and gender– criticism that started in the 1960s and truly has actually not stopped.

Both the Chevy Chase structure and my own ward’s structure were built extremely in a different way from how the church does things today. Before the Correlation program took hold in the late 1970s and 1980s, members needed to raise their own cash to build their regional structures. This led to a great deal of architectural range that much of us grieve the loss of now. When the church took control of, the bright side was that regional wards didn’t need to participate in enormous fundraising efforts (on top of tithing) to erect their chapelsa welcome modification that made having a chapel structure simply as possible for a bad neighborhood when it comes to an upscale one like Chevy Chase. The problem was that it set up a rather soulless procedure of cookie-cutter meetinghouse strategies that might be plopped down throughout the world and put up rapidly. Performance, not charm, was the guideline.

Pre-Correlation midcentury LDS structures often included additionals that showed the tenor of the times, helping with the lots of “extracurricular” activities that were part and parcel of Mormon life. This disappeared social world is something that numerous older members of the church reveal terrific fond memories for, and it comes through in a short paper search of the early years of the Chevy Chase ward.

In 1962, for instance, the structure made the news for hosting the theatrical “Goodbye My Fancy,” placed on by the youth of the Washington Stake Mutual Improvement Association (later on called “Young Men” and “Young Women”). This was no amateur roadway program, however an enthusiastic phase production based upon a 1948 Broadway play and 1951 Joan Crawford motion picture. All finished with volunteer skill.

The list below year, the Chevy Chase ward once again made the news, this time for its success in the church’s thriving basketball league for high school young boys, which at that time consisted of groups from 4,000 wards throughout the United States. Chevy Chase won its area, beating groups throughout the Eastern Seaboard from Maine to North Carolina. It sent its unbeaten group to the nationwide champions in Salt Lake City. Composing of the group’s possibilities, the regional Montgomery County Sentinel boasted that the church’s athletic program was “most likely the world’s biggest basketball league.” I question that, however it’s indisputable that the league’s scope was huge which it sealed lots of people’s ties to the church throughout the week along with on Sundays. (It likewise impacted the cookie-cutter architecture of regional meetinghouses henceforth: Even though we do not have basketball competitions now, the bigger strategies still quite function basketball courts.)

Another news clipping about the Chevy Chase ward, this time from the list below year, 1964. The Baltimore Sun reported on the Singing Mormon Mothers, who headed to New York City to take part in a significant musical extravaganza. They offered a sneak peek performance at the Chevy Chase meetinghouse before signing up with numerous other Singing Mothers who would carry out opposite the Mormon Pavilion at the 1964 World’s Fair. (Other groups of Singing Mormon Mothers were arranged in America and Europe from the 1920s through the 1970s, it appears, and were in some cases called the Relief Society Singing Mothers)

All 3 of these activities have actually vanished from ward life. We do not place on Broadway plays (or perhaps roadway programs) any longer, take part in a nationwide basketball league including countless church groups or send out numerous regional vocalists to carry out at a World’s Fair. Nor have we changed that lively social world with anything brand-new, a minimum of for grownups.

Approved, individuals are hectic: More females work, and kids have higher scholastic needs today (research for kindergartners ?!). Community-building is lengthy. In its sluggish disintegration, however, the church has actually lost a few of its vigor. Today, LDS grownups have Sunday church, month-to-month temple nights and self-directed gospel direction in the house, stressed by the periodic, and really welcome, meal or vacation event.

If the Chevy Chase structure needs to be changed, I hope it’s made with regard not simply for the ward’s spiritual life and sacrament conferences however likewise for its secret sauce of neighborhood. I hope they keep not simply a basketball court however likewise a phase. Is it useful? No. Positive? Yes.

Latter-day Saints utilized to be geniuses at producing neighborhood, in all sort of imaginative methods. And evaluating from the atomization of society and growing isolation of individuals around the globe, that’s going to be required now especially.