Understanding Churches

I appreciate your thoughts on observing churches. Since our public schools were originally designed to “decatholicify" the children of Irish immigrants, the classrooms promoted in the 1860s-1870s by Henry Barnard were created to mimic New England Congregationist churches. Seats in rows facing a pulpit in front, minimal decoration, and of course all reading from the same page of the same book at the same time.

The Catholic Mass, whether Irish or LatinX is entirely different. First, there is rarely only one Mass a day — people can choose their time. Second there are no books, the Mass in oral. Third, there is constant movement. Fourth Catholic churches are filled with relevant distractions, sculptures and stained glass, signs of the cross and paintings that all tell the same story different ways. Finally the Mass engages every human sense. You hear, you see, you touch, you smell (the incense), you taste (communion).

African American church services usually differ radically from both, with music and movement essential, with dramatic shifts in volume, with a determination to bring the whole body and soul into action.

Is it any surprise that children from these different cultures struggle in spaces designed for white Methodists?

It is interesting because William Alcott writing in 1832 recommended school rooms where students might sit still “as long as five minutes,” where the teacher’s desk would be filled with objects of “distracting wonder,” and where no student should go more than 20 minutes without going outside.

But when Horace Mann made education about religious conversion, and saw teachers as missionaries, he opened the door for Barnard whose god was emerging capitalism, and who saw his purpose as creating compliant workers for the Colt Firearms factory.

And here we are.

• Ira Socol