Churches I Have Met and Liked
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Page 12 Freethought Today Madison, Wisconsin September 2011 ‘Above us only sky’ Churches I have met and liked By Annie Laurie Gaylor County Wicklow for the next day. We The Church restaurant & bar, Dublin. smiled as we ended up back at the Eerie Glendalough graveyard, Ireland. very same cemetery, via a different and equally picturesque route. What “Above us only sky.” My paternal grandmother nev- a difference tour guides make! Ciarán On our final day in Scotland, with er saw a church she didn’t like. “What and Mike had kept up an amusing Dan courageously driving a left-hand- a pretty little church,” she would ex- freethought commentary on all mat- ed stick shift on the “wrong side” of the Annie Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker Photos by claim, no matter how ugly, or large, the ters, including the hermit monk, Kev- highway, we spent half the day on a wild- church was. in, who had fled to Glendalough to get goose chase to see Maxwelton’s House We kids loved our grandmother, a away from it, only to attract followers near Moniaive, south of Glasgow. I was warm, slightly plump Missouri acolyte and end up founding a settlement in named in part for the Scottish ballad, of the Christian Church (Disciples of the 7th century. “Annie Laurie,” a poem beginning, Christ). So we knew not to snicker in The Irish Catholic tour bus driver, “Maxwelton’s braes are bonnie.” The her presence or say anything disre- taking us over much the same terri- braes (soft hills) are indeed bonnie, spectful, even though her comments tory, solemnly informed us and other but it turns out the website advertising were partly directed at us heathens for tourists that a woman follower (per- that the house was still open, was woe- our betterment. But in private, Grand- haps not human, maybe a demon?) fully outdated. ma’s admiration for all structures ec- tried to tempt “Saint Kevin” while he The owner started to chase us away clesiastical became a bit of a standing slept. (The masochistic Kevin suppos- when we drove up, but once she heard family joke. edly slept on a perilous precipice, now our accent (and my first name), she Since returning from a trip with me known as “Saint Kevin’s Bed.”) The settled in for a friendly chat about the to Ireland and Scotland this summer, driver cheerfully informed us that the difficulties of trying to keep up a man- The Brasserie, another church-turned- Dan announced a new standing joke. holy Kevin cold-bloodedly strangled or. There was once a chapel; if it’s in restaurant. Glasgow. While Grandma never met a church her as a temptress and threw her in the ruins, we didn’t see it. she didn’t like, Dan says I never met a lake, which might, he informed us, still We ended our Scottish touring on a ruined church I don’t like! be haunted. Maybe we should be afraid freethought note by driving to see the But a church need not be ruined. of this woman, he suggested. In a sotto newly opened Robert Burns Birthplace Few modern churches can aspire to the voce aside to Dan, I said, “Maybe we Museum in Alloway, Ayrshire, next to kind of breathtaking beauty of the ru- should be more afraid of lunatic mi- Burns’ birthplace (a few tiny rooms ined Parthenon, after all. To meet with sogynist hermits, and their followers!” with attached barn predominating), my approval, I am happy to see them This same tour bus driver confided, and the gorgeous real “Brigadoon” turned to secular uses. As the Scottish when Dan and I chatted with him over (bridge over Alloway River). The tour- freethinker-turned-American-reformer tea, that the movie, “The Magdalene ing area included the tiny but eerie Frances Wright advised so sagely in Sisters,” was “only t’e haf’ ov it.” Yet, churchyard with its ruined kirk, which 1828, “Turn your churches into halls despite more developments on a Vati- inspired Burns’ famous poem, “Tam O of science. Fill the vacuum of your can cover-up announced daily on radio Shanter.” mind.” and in newspapers during our trip, the Even when Robbie was a young Wright should be applauded for guide insisted the scandals had been lad, the church was in ruins, although taking her own advice, literally pur- all cleaned up now and no more pe- burials continued there. That is where chasing a church in New York City dophile priests exist in Ireland. (Not Burns’ father was buried, with a loving and turning it into a Hall of Science, even one?) Why was I surprised? Reli- elegy penned by his son. Burns’ “Tam which, for a time, became a trend in gion is, after all, a game of willful self- O Shanter,” which warns of “Alloway’s the freethought movement of the early deception. auld, haunted kirk,” is carved, in part, 1800s. On to Scotland on steppingstones all around the ru- Dan and I took advantage of an in- ined church. It felt like Halloween St. John The Evangelist Catholic vitation to speak at the World Atheist We took a church-free, four-day trip there, even in June. church, famously without spire in Convention in Dublin in early June to to the isle of Skye, ancestral home of Speaking of Burns and churches, rural Ireland. They ran out of money extend our stay into a short explora- my mother’s Nicol clan, where we rode one of his most famous (and impious) (and had their priorities straight)! tion of southwestern Ireland and Scot- on a steam train that took us over the poems is set in a church: “To a Louse, land. “Ruined churches,” through no famous “Harry Potter” viaduct bridge. On seeing one on a lady’s bonnet at deliberate planning, ended up becom- Returning deathly ill, I checked into a church.” Burns castigates “Ye ugly, ing a vacation “theme.” Glasgow hotel with Dan, just in time to creepin, blastit wonner,/Detested, The blasphemy started at the take an early morning ambulance ride shunn’d by saunt an’ sinner,” after Church Bar in Dublin, formerly St. to the hospital emergency room (no spying one in “miss’s bonnet.” The hu- Mary’s Church of Ireland, a galleried questions, no charge!). morous poem ends: church. Convention planners, includ- We took it easy that day, giving my O wad some Power the giftie gie us ing Atheist Ireland Chairperson Mi- medicine time to work, and discovered To see oursels as ithers see us! chael Nugent, had invited conference we were across the street from yet an- It wad frae monie a blunder free us, speakers to rendezvous there before other church that has been converted An’ foolish notion: the conference for an irreverent din- into yet another restaurant! We didn’t What airs in dress an’ gait wad lea’e us, ner at what used to be a cavernous have time to dine there but took a sou- Burns’ “auld, haunted kirk.” An’ ev’n devotion! church. venir photograph. Post-conference, Ciarán, with Mi- During a hasty day trip to Edin- I feel sure that the icon-blasting chael as passenger, kindly offered to burgh, we took a self-guided tour of the Burns, had he lived long enough, drive Dan and me around the area. We Palace of Holyroodhouse, still officially would have seconded Frances Wright’s felt very fortunate when we ended up occupied by the Queen. This is the advice to turn churches into halls of being whisked away into the country to castle where the Roman Catholic and science, or even would have settled Wicklow mountains and the beautiful very pregnant Mary Queen of Scots was for my own less lofty ambition to turn Glendalough. Glendalough, “Valley of essentially imprisoned by her husband them into restaurants. Unfortunately, the Two Lakes” (“lough,” as in the Scot- Lord Darnley, and where he had her it’s difficult imagining what use civili- tish “loch,” means lake), also boasts a private secretary David Rizzio slain in zation can put to church architecture mysterious round tower built by monks front of her in her private chambers. circa 21st century America, with its hid- for some kind of safekeeping of prop- Our tour ended at a ruined church, eous huge “box” megachurches. erty (probably acquired corruptly from Holyrood Abbey, that used to be part Not even my fond grandmother the poor), and, you guessed it, a ru- of the castle. It turns out the Catholic could have called them “pretty little ined church in a very pretty setting. church was sacked for good, after vari- churches.” Wild purple rhododendrums set off ous previous attacks, in 1688, and had ancient tombstones, mottled aestheti- been left in its state of beautiful disre- Annie Laurie Gaylor is a co-founder cally by decay, which were pitched at pair ever since. The roof collapsed in and co-president of the Freedom From Reli- creepy, impossible angles. the 1700s. Dan, who had read a book gion Foundation. She is author of Woe to We hadn’t known Ciarán would so about stonemasons, blissfully wan- the Women: The Bible Tells Me So and edi- kindly give us a tour of these parts, dered around admiring the handi- tor of Women Without Superstition – ‘No Above us only sky. Ruined Catholic so we had prebooked a coach tour of work. I could only smile and think, Gods, No Masters’: An Anthology. Church, Holyrood Castle, Edinburgh..