(RNS) — On Monday afternoon (Nov. 20), a meetinghouse of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints went up in flames in Chevy Chase, Maryland. I realized about this when two individuals in my Fb feed who had fond recollections of that chapel posted their unhappiness and nervousness. In response to local CBS news outlet WUSA9, the fireplace resulted in a partial collapse of the constructing and required greater than 100 firefighters to cease the flames.

Thank heavens, nobody was killed or injured. However there was greater than $10 million in injury, and it’s not but clear whether or not the constructing could be restored or will should be changed totally.

The reason for the fireplace had not been launched as of this writing, however not one of the information stories point out foul play.

I don’t have any private historical past with that chapel, nevertheless it dates from the 1950s, the identical decade as my very own ward’s meetinghouse, so I’ve been considering of how devastated I might really feel if one thing related occurred right here. There’s a lot historical past in these buildings, affecting so many lives. I do know that by way of historical past, a church that’s 70-something years previous has nothing on a church that’s, say, 700. However in Mormonism, a lot of every day life has occurred in these buildings — particularly again then. The Chevy Chase constructing, and my very own ward constructing, have hosted exceptional efforts at forging neighborhood.

The 1950s marked a novel historic second within the development of the church, significantly within the Washington, D.C., space. These have been heady days. Ezra Taft Benson was taking his spot as President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s secretary of agriculture, the very best publish ever held by a Mormon in nationwide life. Absolutely anything appeared doable for our younger faith on the transfer. By way of the media and its public picture, the church was enjoying a kind of golden era between the anti-polygamy protection of the late 19th and really early 20th centuries and the crucial therapies of the church’s dealing with of race and gender — criticism that started within the 1960s and actually has not stopped.

Each the Chevy Chase constructing and my very own ward’s constructing have been constructed very in another way from how the church does issues at present. Earlier than the Correlation program took maintain within the late 1970s and 1980s, members needed to elevate their very own cash to assemble their native buildings. This resulted in lots of architectural selection that many people mourn the lack of now. When the church took over, the excellent news was that native wards didn’t have to interact in massive fundraising efforts (on top of tithing) to erect their chapels, a welcome change that made having a chapel constructing simply as doable for a poor neighborhood as for an prosperous one like Chevy Chase. The dangerous information was that it instituted a considerably soulless strategy of cookie-cutter meetinghouse plans that could possibly be plopped down wherever on this planet and erected shortly. Effectivity, not magnificence, was the rule.

Pre-Correlation midcentury LDS buildings generally got here with extras that mirrored the tenor of the instances, facilitating the numerous “extracurricular” actions that have been half and parcel of Mormon life. This vanished social world is one thing that many older members of the church categorical nice nostalgia for, and it comes via in a short newspaper search of the early years of the Chevy Chase ward. 

In 1962, for instance, the constructing made the information for internet hosting the theatrical “Goodbye My Fancy,” placed on by the youth of the Washington Stake Mutual Enchancment Affiliation (later referred to as “Younger Males” and “Younger Girls”). This was no newbie highway present, however an bold stage manufacturing based mostly on a 1948 Broadway play and 1951 Joan Crawford film. All achieved with volunteer expertise.

The next yr, the Chevy Chase ward once more made the information, this time for its success within the church’s flourishing basketball league for highschool boys, which at the moment included groups from 4,000 wards throughout the US. Chevy Chase received its area, beating groups throughout the Jap Seaboard from Maine to North Carolina. Then it despatched its undefeated workforce to the nationwide championships in Salt Lake Metropolis. Writing of the workforce’s probabilities, the native Montgomery County Sentinel boasted that the church’s athletic program was “most likely the world’s largest basketball league.” I doubt that, nevertheless it’s simple that the league’s scope was large and that it cemented many individuals’s ties to the church in the course of the week in addition to on Sundays. (It additionally affected the cookie-cutter structure of native meetinghouses henceforth: Regardless that we don’t have basketball tournaments now, the bigger plans nonetheless very a lot function basketball courts.)

Another information clipping concerning the Chevy Chase ward, this time from the next yr, 1964. The Baltimore Solar reported on the Singing Mormon Moms, who headed to New York Metropolis to take part in a serious musical extravaganza. They gave a preview live performance on the Chevy Chase meetinghouse earlier than becoming a member of lots of of different Singing Moms who would carry out reverse the Mormon Pavilion on the 1964 World’s Truthful. (Other groups of Singing Mormon Mothers have been organized in America and Europe from the 1920s via the 1970s, it appears, and have been generally referred to as the Relief Society Singing Mothers.)

All three of those actions have disappeared from ward life. We don’t placed on Broadway performs (and even highway exhibits) anymore, take part in a nationwide basketball league involving 1000’s of church groups or ship lots of of native singers to carry out at a World’s Truthful. Nor have we changed that vibrant social world with something new, not less than for adults.

Granted, individuals are busy: Extra ladies work, and children have better tutorial calls for at present (homework for kindergartners?!). Neighborhood-building is time-consuming. In its sluggish erosion, although, the church has misplaced a few of its vitality. Immediately, LDS adults have Sunday church, month-to-month temple nights and self-directed gospel instruction at residence, punctuated by the occasional, and really welcome, potluck or vacation celebration.

If the Chevy Chase constructing must be changed, I hope it’s achieved with respect not only for the ward’s spiritual life and sacrament conferences but additionally for its secret sauce of neighborhood. I hope they maintain not only a basketball courtroom but additionally a stage. Is it sensible? No. Optimistic? Sure.

Latter-day Saints was once geniuses at creating neighborhood, in all types of artistic methods. And judging from the atomization of society and rising loneliness of individuals around the globe, that’s going to be wanted now greater than ever.