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In search of Shrines

What's a Southern Baptist shrine?

Roadside signs we have plenty but I'm not sure what a Southern Baptist shrine would be.

By the way, in the South, Southern Baptists are considered "liberal," compared with independent fundamentalist, King James Version only Baptist churches.

Jay Croft
Church of the Holy Comforter
Montgomery, Alabama, USA
19 May 2014

(Editor: we're not entirely sure ourselves. As our editor located in the 'American deep South' pointed out to us, the different flavours of evangelical churches diverge more in some areas than in other parts of the world. We assumed the roadside shrines we see that don't have a Roman Catholic style to them were Southern Baptist.)

The Episcopal Church in Myrtle Beach is what's left, after the Diocese of South Carolina went rogue last year and pulled out of The Episcopal Church. We are meeting now, compliments of the Methodists which, somehow, seems fitting.

I've yet to find an Anglican offering, but I have often been amused traveling through the Heartland, coming upon a "bathtub basilica" propped up in someone's front yard. Frequently, it is next to a rubber tire dangling from a rope, attached to the limb of a whitewashed tree trunk....

Samuel A Symr Jr
The Episcopal Church in Myrtle Beach
Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, USA
19 May 2014

(Editor: a 'bathtub basilica' sounds like clever engineering and good re-use of resources. And it does solve the problem of what to do with that old clawfoot bathtub. A judge in California recently said [page 26 of this document] that it makes no sense for a diocese to 'leave' a church. Someday this squabble will end.)

We may not have Anglican roadside shrines in England, but every parish has a war memorial. Does that count?

Sandra Laythorpe
St Boniface
Chandlers Ford, Hampshire, UK
19 May 2014

(Editor: Parish war memorials that we have seen in England seem very official and seem to be part of the church or churchyard. To us a roadside shrine is more spontaneous and less official. Also, most English war memorials in our experience are not by the side of the road, but in a more dignified place.)

Earlier letters

We launched our 'Letters to AO' section on 11 May 2003. All published letters are in our archives.