Michael Southern
Philadelphia Historic Preservation Corporation
Inspired March-April 1989 p. 15

Educating Ourselves About Rural Church Preservation

The old country church is the pre-eminent emblem of rural life and community in North Carolina. Though the state is the nation's tenth largest in population and one of the most industrialized in the South, it is also one of the least urbanized, with half of its people still living outside of incorporated towns and cities. Baptist, Methodist, A.M.E. Zion, Episcopal and various fundamentalist churches are widely distributed across the state. Lutheran and Church of Christ (formerly German Reformed) congregations hold forth in German-settled areas of the Piedmont. Disciples of Christ and other groups have a presence in some rural sections. Church buildings from every era are found widely, but simple frame buildings predominate, (with or without belfries or modest Gothic Revival ornament), dating from late 19th and early 20th, century periods of agrarian prosperity.

Like the rest of rural America, economic and demographic changes have affected the vitality of the state's rural churches. In tobacco-growing regions, mechanization and reform of the acreage allotment system have contributed to the decline of the traditional family tobacco farm. Where new industry has not appeared to take up the economic slack, emigration has sapped membership from hundreds of rural churches.

There are no hard figures on the loss of membership or the abandonment of historic country church buildings in the state. Many rural congregations are affiliated only loosely, if at all, with larger denominational associations or councils, and membership records often do not exist. While abandonment of rural church buildings is not yet considered to be epidemic, local surveys of historic buildings identify occasional abandoned churches, and a great many small rural congregations appear to be nearing the end of the line. A number of the state's finest, small, 19th-century churches are maintained by a handful of elderly members who hold services only periodically; some are used only once annually for a reunion service and picnic.

When congregations have disbanded entirely, some have chosen to tear down an old church building rather than see it fall into ruin or be used for secular purposes. Elsewhere, a church property may have reverted to the heirs of the original owner and now serve as farm storage buildings; a few have been adapted for dwellings, shops, or other new uses.

Official preservation programs offer little help to struggling rural congregations, in part because of sensitivity about church-state separation. When restoration grants were available for buildings listed on the National Register, churches had to prove historical or architectural, not religious, significance to be listed on the Register and, even then, active churches were usually excluded from receiving the grants. Tax incentives, either federal tax credits or local property tax deferrals (available to properties designated by local preservation commissions in North Carolina) are not applicable. Help from denomination conventions and councils is limited, usually nonexistent; often congregations must fend for themselves.

When rural congregations remain active and prosperous, the changes they may make to their buildings become the problems-, what preservationists call "unsympathetic rehabilitations." Rural church members routinely apply brick veneer and artificial sidings to frame church buildings, remove hard-to-maintain steeples and ornament, replace windows and furnishings, apply interior paneling and lower ceilings. These practices cannot be simply characterized as well-intentioned, but inappropriate treatment of old church buildings by people "who don't know any better." Congregations make these changes out of complete respect for their forebeaters and their congregations' traditions. In their eyes, they are maintaining the most important inheritance given to them, not an old building, but the right and the responsibility to create and maintain an appropriate place of worship for themselves in the present, and the present they know demands these changes.

To preservationists, these views may seem very foreign. We sometimes believe that our finely tuned respect for historic architectural form and fabric represents an absolute value, and it is on that basis that we seek to "educate" locals about proper conservation treatments for old buildings. In fact, such professional values may be in opposition to local sentiment: A distaste for the "preciousness of things," including buildings. Our first task, therefore, may not be to offer rural congregations "preservation education" but to educate ourselves about their needs and values.

Guest Column by Michael Southern, Head of Survey and Planning Branch North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office.