We usually just link in a photo from Churches of the West here, rather than comment, but I interjected a comment in Churches of the West recently that perhaps would have been more appropriate here. At least its certainly appropriate here, and I'm going to build on it a tad.
Here's the post, which itself incorporated an older post:
We rarely feature a church twice here, although occasionally we do if there's a reason. This is one such example.
We posted on the Kaycee United Methodist Church quite some time ago in this post:
Kaycee Wyoming is a small ranching community in southern Johnson County. This Methodist Church is located there.
Here's the same church today:
The church is still there, but it's no longer a Methodist Church. It's name indicates that it is the "Redemption" church which causes me to suppose its likely some type of non denominational protestant church. That doesn't surprise me much because, in modern times, having a sufficient population of Methodists in a small town such as this would be a bit of a surprise for Wyoming. I'd have expected the Baptist church, which is often the default protestant church in this part of the country, but a Methodist church is quite specific. This is not to say, of course, that this pattern always holds. For example, Shoshoni has a prominent Presbyterian church.
For much of modern small town Wyoming today, however, what we'd expect to see is probably a non denominational protestant church, maybe a Baptist church, a Catholic church, and a Mormon church. We might omit any one of those, or perhaps half of those, depending upon how small and isolated the town is. This contrast notably from a century ago, or half century ago, when an Episcopal Church would almost be a default for any small Wyoming town and we'd see more active small, but denominational, churches.
In all of this Wyoming follows a bit of the modern trend, although that trend isn't really properly analyzed as a rule. There are very distinct doctrinal differences between the various protestant churches but a lot of rank and file protestants don't really acknowledge them very much which has given a boost to "non denominational" Christian churches which are not quite as non denominational as it might seem in real terms.
Anyhow, this church appears to have changed roles a bit. I wonder what denomination originally built it?
I used to note on this site that I rarely comment on religion here, but in fact I often do so that's not true any longer. Maybe it was never true. Anyhow this is such a comment here, and in fact I've basically already made it.
This photograph is illustrative of a shift that's occurred in much of the country in Protestant communities. Allegiance to various Protestant denominations has weakened considerably and often isn't even grasped by members of the congregations.
Now, that doesn't mean its disappeared altogether by any means. Indeed, some Protestant communities are very conscience of their doctrinal positions. But many people are not.
I know quite a few Protestants who feel pretty comfortable going from one Protestant church to another without much thought as to their respective doctrines. For example, I know one person who went from a Lutheran church to a Protestant church of that's of the solo scriptura variety without much thought at all what that meant, as the music was better at the second church. That's her business, of course, and I'm not commenting on that switch itself, other than it is a fairly typical modern phenomenon.
This didn't happen nearly as often at one time. Part of that was cultural. People often stuck with a church that reflected their ethnic heritage, and married back into it. So people of Scots heritage, for example, tended to marry other people of Scots heritage, and they went to the Presbyterian Church, which was after all the Church of Scotland. People who were of Scandinavian extraction were typically Lutherans, and so on. And in various churches this remains true. It's still quite often the case, for example, that Lutherans are of Scandinavian extraction. But the looser connection with the Protestant denominations with their congregations is pretty undeniable, and that's reflected itself in what we see above. . . fewer small Protestant churches in small towns.
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