The Death of the Midwestern Church
January 20, 2016 8:33 AM   Subscribe

Rural neighborhood churches, once the heart of many Iowan communities, are disappearing along with local schools. The result is a tear in the social fabric of life in the Midwest. “There is no glue holding these communities together ... and it’s making us forget how to neighbor. ... If someone is working all the time and has less disposable income, where can they go for help? It used to be church. Now?” ... “you can’t survive unless you become a neighbor and then let other people neighbor you in turn.”
posted by jillithd (45 comments total) 14 users marked this as a favorite
 
Interesting. Particularly interesting is the (counterintuitive) claim that the decline of churches has made Iowans more conservative.

If I had to guess, though, I would say that the loss of local schools has had a vastly bigger impact than the loss of local churches. Schools united religiously-diverse towns in a way that churches didn't. And it's all tied to change in the rural economy and the resulting exodus of young people. The church thing is a result, not a cause, of the breakdown of rural communities.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:47 AM on January 20, 2016 [18 favorites]


It's so bad that people have forgotten their adverbs and are unrepentant in their verbing of nouns!
posted by aureliobuendia at 9:04 AM on January 20, 2016 [8 favorites]


This is part of why relying on personal acts of charity (and organizations sponsored by individual donations) to provide a social safety network is problematic, and why fully funding government-run social safety nets like WIC, food stamps, unemployment benefits, welfare, and so forth are so important. Even to small conservative towns.
posted by ChuraChura at 9:06 AM on January 20, 2016 [35 favorites]


The article is, I think, right in pointing out that those towns are not consistently conservative. And I don't know that the government can provide the kind of neighborliness that it discusses, although obviously public schools are a government service. (And I mean, government money is the lifeblood of small Iowa towns, if you count things like farm subsidies and Federal highway funds.)
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 9:10 AM on January 20, 2016 [4 favorites]


"how to neighbor"

*eyetwitch*
posted by entropicamericana at 9:20 AM on January 20, 2016 [4 favorites]


And I mean, government money is the lifeblood of small Iowa towns, if you count things like farm subsidies and Federal highway funds.)

Not just small Iowa towns. Small Oklahoma towns, small Tennessee towns, small towns across the country. Though the cut-off-the-nose-to-spite-the-face denial of said lifeblood is very strong. That's what always gets me about these people, seemingly mostly politicians who have probably never been in a rural area in their lives for more than a blink of an eye, who always say that God and church and charity will take care of those in need when all the government money is removed and "replaced" with block grants or whatever the new term is for rapacious swindling these days. What charity? Where? Whose? What century are these people living in?
posted by blucevalo at 9:34 AM on January 20, 2016 [9 favorites]


Driving around my sister's small town a few months back, she was bemoaning the fact that the churches were closing and more liquor stores were opening up.

"So," I asked, "how many times have you gone to church recently? And how many times to the liquor store?"

Good non-believer that she is, I knew the answer before I asked it.

It would be great, I think, if some humanist came up with a church that people actually want to go to that doesn't require believing a bunch of mumbo-jumbo. But for some reason it seems that you need mumbo-jumbo to build that kind of community. I wonder why.
posted by clawsoon at 9:35 AM on January 20, 2016 [3 favorites]


It's curious to me that the article doesn't mention megachurches. A lot of small churches are closing partly because bigger Iowa churches can afford to reach out to smaller outlying communities. (We've had people leave flyers at our door, or mail flyers to us, on behalf of churches located 22, 27, and 44 miles away, while the smaller churches right here in town have never tried to contact us. I'd like to assume it's because the small churches lack the resources to do so, rather than that they've decided we're too far gone to save.*) If you're unchurched, but thinking about joining a church somewhere, where would you want to go? The place 20 miles away that sends people to invite you, or the place 0 miles away that doesn't try to contact you at all?

And of course megachurches tend to be evangelical and right-wing. And megachurches don't, in my experience, do much to foster a sense of community, because there are too many people for it to really function as one: you maybe wind up occasionally doing projects with the other people in the 26-To-28-Year-Old Unmarrieds group, but since half of them live 40 minutes away from you, they're not going to stop by with a lasagna after your mom dies. They may not even hear about her. And if they do hear about her, they might not know who you are.

I mean, it could be that my megachurch experiences have been atypical (they were many years ago, and in a different state), but I think they explain both the decline of small churches and the rise of more extreme conservatism. At least a little.

-

*(We are, but they shouldn't know that already.)
posted by Spathe Cadet at 9:40 AM on January 20, 2016 [27 favorites]


It would be great, I think, if some humanist came up with a church that people actually want to go to that doesn't require believing a bunch of mumbo-jumbo.

There's the Sunday Assembly, and I'm personally fond of the Unitarian Universalists, but I'm not sure how popular those groups are in the Midwest.
posted by imnotasquirrel at 9:40 AM on January 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


I actually really like the idea that "neighbor" is a verb, that it's something you do with and for other people, and they do for you too.

Interesting. Particularly interesting is the (counterintuitive) claim that the decline of churches has made Iowans more conservative.

And yet it doesn't quite seem so counter-intuitive if you conceive of that brand of conservatism as being based in part on social isolation and a resultant lack of empathy, which I think can be a fruitful way to make sense of things like the tenor of rhetoric coming from the right in America in the last few decades.
posted by clockzero at 9:42 AM on January 20, 2016 [16 favorites]


clawsoon, the truth of your point is immediately clear, and it's one I have thought of often myself. (Luckily, I homebrew a little beer and go to Mass regularly, so I am still on the safe side of your question.)

However, I really wish non-believers wouldn't refer to religious belief as "mumbo-jumbo." Can everyone maybe class up their comments a little, and cut out the contempt?

For myself, I would want a closer look at the shift from older-line Christian denominations to evangelicalism, as Spathe Cadet points out, as opposed to the simple point of "small churches are closing." And with that, I am off to RTFA.
posted by wenestvedt at 9:43 AM on January 20, 2016 [8 favorites]


It would be great, I think, if some humanist came up with a church that people actually want to go to that doesn't require believing a bunch of mumbo-jumbo. But for some reason it seems that you need mumbo-jumbo to build that kind of community.

Clawsoon, it may not be the "mumbo-jumbo" that puts people off so much as it's the judgementalism found in some small-town churches*. Churches who focus more on service and community support, I suspect, do better.

* I also note that dismissing religious faith as "mumbo-jumbo" would be a judgemental line for a humanist church to take, so I suspect a humanist institution would want to consider the "emphasis on the community" aspect as well.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:44 AM on January 20, 2016 [4 favorites]


It would be great, I think, if some humanist came up with a church that people actually want to go to that doesn't require believing a bunch of mumbo-jumbo.

There's the Sunday Assembly, and I'm personally fond of the Unitarian Universalists, but I'm not sure how popular those groups are in the Midwest.


UUs have plenty of 'mumbo-jumbo'; it's just that you get to pick your flavor.

They also haven't sorted out the "church that people actually want to go to" part.
posted by leotrotsky at 9:50 AM on January 20, 2016 [2 favorites]


UUs have plenty of 'mumbo-jumbo'; it's just that you get to pick your flavor.

They don't require that you believe in anything though, which is what clawsoon said. Plenty of atheists and agnostics among their ranks. As an agnostic, I like them because they respect a person's individual path to truth (which includes not using judgmental rhetoric like "mumbo jumbo"). But to each their own. They're definitely not all that popular in general.
posted by imnotasquirrel at 9:58 AM on January 20, 2016 [2 favorites]


It would be great, I think, if some humanist came up with a church that people actually want to go to that doesn't require believing a bunch of mumbo-jumbo.

There's also Reform Judaism and Liberal Quakerism to consider; having participated in both I can say with confidence that the former has far superior bagels.
posted by leotrotsky at 9:59 AM on January 20, 2016 [8 favorites]


There exist small and dying churches; that would seemingly not want new members or to engage in outreach, and by action preferring to fade away; as if a members only club, or a cult of sorts.

Makes no biblical sense; but many have experienced 'that church' and/or 'that congregation' multiple times.
posted by buzzman at 10:11 AM on January 20, 2016 [3 favorites]


It would be great, I think, if some humanist came up with a church that people actually want to go to that doesn't require believing a bunch of mumbo-jumbo.

This is a thing that is trying to happen in North Carolina.

Way back in the beforetime, I studied online communities in grad school (back in the early days) and the thing that's always stuck with me was how any online community seemed to require regularly-articulated reinforcement of the community identity and values. It seems to me that the advantage to a church is the "bunch of mumbo-jumbo" is the automation of that reinforcement. Not only do you get people to internalize the community values, you also get people who are basically moderators for a community, AKA the clergy.
posted by sobell at 10:24 AM on January 20, 2016 [8 favorites]


UUs have plenty of 'mumbo-jumbo'; it's just that you get to pick your flavor.

In my experience, UUs have actually gotten more spiritual/pagan/Wiccan and less rationalist/humanist in the last few decades. It's a big part of why I'm not involved in the church anymore.
posted by octothorpe at 10:28 AM on January 20, 2016 [3 favorites]


It's so bad that people have forgotten their adverbs and are unrepentant in their verbing of nouns!

"how to neighbor"

*eyetwitch*


Come on, people have been verbing nouns ever since the English language began. Or do you never butter your bread? Does it never rain in your town?
posted by chainsofreedom at 10:38 AM on January 20, 2016 [6 favorites]


aureliobuendia: "It's so bad that people have forgotten their adverbs and are unrepentant in their verbing of nouns!"

Do you know the closing of what I blame this upon? Schools.
posted by boo_radley at 10:39 AM on January 20, 2016 [2 favorites]


In my experience, UUs have actually gotten more spiritual/pagan/Wiccan and less rationalist/humanist in the last few decades. It's a big part of why I'm not involved in the church anymore.

Sadly, that's been my experience as well. It's like all the most annoying people from my liberal arts college got together and decided to make a religion. I'm surprised there wasn't a drum circle.

It's really kind of disappointing, because in the abstract I'm closer to being UU than anything else out there.
posted by leotrotsky at 10:40 AM on January 20, 2016 [7 favorites]


I actually really like the idea that "neighbor" is a verb, that it's something you do with and for other people, and they do for you too.


I don't know I'm imagining Fred Rogers singing "won't you neighbor me?" and it doesn't work as well. But in all seriousness, you're 100% correct as to the appropriateness of that word for that culture that good neighbors strive to create and conserve.
posted by resurrexit at 10:58 AM on January 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


Here in crowded Brooklyn, I came very close to joining a nearby Episcopalian church because they were active in Occupy Sandy, and it turned out they were doing a lot of good things... I went to midnight mass one Christmas Eve, and the pastor's sermon was fantastic. But I just could not bring myself to get past all the mentions of Jesus.

It would be great to have some kind of structured neighborliness organization to belong to.
posted by maggiemaggie at 11:01 AM on January 20, 2016 [3 favorites]


There's also Humanistic Judaism. I've been to the Birmingham Temple on a couple of occasions, and it seems like they do a pretty good job of providing a secular community cultural space with ritual and tradition.
posted by Etrigan at 11:03 AM on January 20, 2016 [2 favorites]


Growing up in a small community in Iowa, I firmly believe that the idea of being a good neighbor is firmly entrenched in the culture of Iowa. My father was raised a Methodist and my mother a Lutheran. We never attended church. However, that neighborly quality is something my family had in spades and I still do, despite never having attended church and living most of my adult life on the West Coast. When I go home, I still have conversations with total strangers in the cheese case at Hy-Vee. I think it is a quality Iowans have that will never die. This recent wave of ungenerous conservatism will eventually be washed away.
posted by Foam Pants at 11:05 AM on January 20, 2016 [5 favorites]


I don't know I'm imagining Fred Rogers singing "won't you neighbor me?" and it doesn't work as well.

That locution makes it sound like some horrific sharing app. Like one where you pay to have someone take out your trash, get your mail, hang your Christmas lights, and stand at the bus stop.

Naybr: Because being a functioning member of society is just too hard!
posted by leotrotsky at 11:18 AM on January 20, 2016 [2 favorites]


maggiemaggie: Here in crowded Brooklyn, I came very close to joining a nearby Episcopalian church because they were active in Occupy Sandy, and it turned out they were doing a lot of good things... I went to midnight mass one Christmas Eve, and the pastor's sermon was fantastic. But I just could not bring myself to get past all the mentions of Jesus.

In my experience with liberal United Methodists and Episcopalians, let me assure you that you would be in perfectly good company. The vast majority of liberal Christians in the US, in my opinion, don't sweat the details of the stuff that they recite, but go about their religious business as they see it. Though many Episcopalians do love them some smells and bells.
posted by tippiedog at 11:40 AM on January 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


The opening of the article is what struck home for me the most:
Evelyn Birkby started having children a few decades ago, when prospective mothers had no recourse to supportive virtual communities on Facebook, Twitter, or Google. “Honey,” she tells me, “all I had was church. I knew nothing about babies when I first started being a mother. So, I depended a lot on the women at church. We didn’t go to coffee together or spend a lot of time on the phone, because we still had a party line then. Sunday mornings were my life line.”
In my area, we have two La Leche League meetings a month: one on the morning of the second Thursday of the month and one on the evening of the fourth Monday of the month. These were my life line when I was a new mom. If there were more meetings, I would have gone to them. It was all I could do to wait for the next one. They were safe spaces. Encouraging spaces. Places with other moms who had already survived what I was going through; proof that there was a light at the end of the tunnel. I know that experience isn't universal for some folks with LLL, but I am very thankful for the chapter here.

So my fears as my child grows include finding a new community for me/us. Because one day he won't want "mama nuk" anymore. And then what? Social media only fills part of the hole, but when my FIL almost died during his birthday brunch on a Sunday last year, most of my social media "friends" were off-line. And the lack of a local safety net can feel very cold and lonely.
posted by jillithd at 11:52 AM on January 20, 2016 [6 favorites]


It would be great, I think, if some humanist came up with a church that people actually want to go to that doesn't require believing a bunch of mumbo-jumbo. But for some reason it seems that you need mumbo-jumbo to build that kind of community. I wonder why.

This sorta seems like asking why we can't have the camaraderie of a bowling league team without the bowling.

It's rare people gather together just for the sake of social support. Usually social support is a byproduct of people gathering for some particular purpose or interest. It turns out that lots of people are interested in God.

If you hate bowling, I suppose you might be able to get a group of folks to buy matching shirts and gather once a week to sit around and not bowl just for the social interaction, but you'd probably have better luck finding something you do like and getting them together to play poker or shoot pool.
posted by straight at 12:14 PM on January 20, 2016 [5 favorites]


leotrotsky: I'm surprised there wasn't a drum circle.

30 seconds of googling will completely dampen your surprise about Unitarian Universalists and drum circles.
posted by clawsoon at 12:20 PM on January 20, 2016 [5 favorites]


One interesting thing from the article that we haven't talked about yet: Religious belief and attendance are back down to 1952 levels. 1952. I tend to think of 1952 as a peak religious time - Eisenhower and backyard BBQs and all that - but I'm clearly wrong about that.

1971 was the year of peak religious belief and attendance. 1971. Which I associate with drugs and hippies and anti-war protests.

I clearly need to update my social history. Why was religious belief and participation as low in conservative 1952 as it is in secular 2016? And was 1952 a low year, or was it even lower before then?
posted by clawsoon at 12:29 PM on January 20, 2016 [11 favorites]


Didn't the bible tell us not to something something our neighbors?
posted by buzzman at 12:37 PM on January 20, 2016


Why was religious belief and participation as low in conservative 1952 as it is in secular 2016? And was 1952 a low year, or was it even lower before then?

Those are good questions! And was 1952 just a low year in Iowa or in the US? I initially thought maybe Vatican II was part of it, as that's when my mom says her mom stopped going to church, but that was in 1962.
posted by jillithd at 12:46 PM on January 20, 2016


Why was religious belief and participation as low in conservative 1952 as it is in secular 2016? And was 1952 a low year, or was it even lower before then?

Bear in mind that those stats are from Iowa, not the whole country:
The Des Moines Register reported the results of a recent Pew Study that found, “on average, about 54 percent of Iowans in 2010 attended a religious service or believed in a religion's ideas. That's about the same as in 1952 but down 8 percentage points from 1971.”
But also, 1952 was more or less before what we think of as "the 1950s" -- Eisenhower wasn't President yet, the U.S. was still in post-WWII and during-Korean-War mode, and the generation that had fought in Europe and the Pacific was just starting to gain influence -- an 18-year-old who enlisted the day after Pearl Harbor wouldn't be 30 yet, and a kid who barely got to Japan to see the aftermath of Hiroshima would be 25. Add in the GI Bill surge in college attendance and home ownership, and people were just barely settling into communities.

So they got more conservative over the next two decades, and many of them took up religion more strongly because of what we think of as "the 1960s".
posted by Etrigan at 12:50 PM on January 20, 2016 [4 favorites]


Concur with the notion of neighborliness in Iowa. We've lived here 3 years now and the folks are really kind and caring. We moved from D.C. metro after 35 years there.
posted by JimDe at 2:19 PM on January 20, 2016


Plenty people found that small town and its neighborhood church to be suffocating, and left as soon as they could.

I do think megachurches and evangelism are serious factors here, however. The strain of conservatism that it fosters is a sort of intellectual incest that has broken conservative leaning folks across the country. Progressive and moderate religious folks cannot be expected to hold things together and balance out the crazy that's resulted, even if we were to presume the numbers of progressive and moderates remained constant, because the crazy that's taken over is so extreme and unyielding. With such a significant segment so infected, not only are institutions like schools and safety nets allowed to wither, such institutions and safety nets become tools of evil. As does anyone who doesn't believe the same. Don't worry about someone who thinks your religious beliefs are mumbo jumbo. Worry about someone who thinks your religious beliefs(and non religious beliefs) are evil.
posted by 2N2222 at 2:59 PM on January 20, 2016 [4 favorites]


1971 was the year of peak religious belief and attendance. 1971. Which I associate with drugs and hippies and anti-war protests.

So remember those awesome Boomers, the ones who were all born in the late 40s and were super liberal and sunshine and civil rights? Yeah, they came of age and turned 21 (this is pre-26th Amendment, voting age wasn't lowered yet) in, at the earliest... 1968. And then Richard Nixon got elected. And then when four (actually seven years' worth of voters, as the voting age was lowered) years had passed -- Richard Nixon was reelected.

I have a theory that the Greatest Generation or whatever we're calling them had way more to do with the progress made in the '60s and that the baby boomers, insofar as generations can be generalized (and yeah that is hugely problematic) are actually the reactionaries, with a loud minority of decent people that actually stood up for progressive values.
posted by tivalasvegas at 3:42 PM on January 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


clawsoon: "But for some reason it seems that you need mumbo-jumbo to build that kind of community. I wonder why."

One of the reasons is that humans are ritualistic beings who need liturgies and rituals. Faith communities are "stickier" when they have strong liturgical lives; there's a sort of core of true believers who are motivated by fervent belief alone, but typically the bulk of your membership is there for the singing, and the mystery, and the incense, and the ritual. That's also why non-believing Catholics will keep going to church now and then for 20 years after they went "eh" on the actual beliefs, but non-believing Evangelical Protestants are pretty quick out the doors. It's also why you see a lot of Evangelical Protestant churches burn hot and burn out; we know that children, for example, stick around a lot longer in liturgical religions than in fervent-belief-alone religions, and American Evangelical Protestantism is both hostile to liturgy and HUUUUUGE on personal belief aligning with faith statements. (Sometimes this difference is expressed as orthodoxy -- "right belief" -- versus orthopraxy -- "right practice." In an orthopraxic-leaning faith, like Catholicism, or most forms of Judaism, as long as you do the right things -- participate in ritual with the required frequency, abstain from whatever is forbidden foodwise, recite the correct recitations -- your specific beliefs aren't inquired into very closely. Orthopraxic religions tend to be "bigger tent" than orthodoxic ones.)

ArbitraryAndCapricious: "If I had to guess, though, I would say that the loss of local schools has had a vastly bigger impact than the loss of local churches. Schools united religiously-diverse towns in a way that churches didn't. "

I'm not positive this is the case; in the 1960s, 2/3 of American households had a child enrolled in the K-12 schools; today, about 1/3 do. With smaller families and fewer families having children and fewer multigenerational households, schools just aren't the social glue they used to be -- and indeed, are often a community flashpoint for conflict because schools are very expensive (as local taxes go) but 2/3 of households aren't using them and don't intend to. Even if small-town schools in Iowa were still there, the aging of the rural population would suggest fewer and fewer households would have any direct investment in them.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 4:05 PM on January 20, 2016 [11 favorites]


Aside from schools, one of the major social structures in rural communities used to be the Grange Hall. Usually nondenominational, it was a focus for people involved in family farming. Many places may be rural, but the emphasis is away from farming, and the Granges are gone.
posted by BlueHorse at 7:06 PM on January 20, 2016 [7 favorites]


That's also why non-believing Catholics will keep going to church now and then for 20 years after they went "eh" on the actual beliefs, but non-believing Evangelical Protestants are pretty quick out the doors.

It helps that the Catholics and the Anglicans actually have had centuries to work out some genuinely beautiful liturgies and settings for them. I was brought up Episcopalian, but most of my extended relatives are one flavor of evangelical or another, each more fundamentalist than the next, and the thing that always dismays me looking back on their churches is how aesthetically and intellectually barren the services were. The notion of God's home being the biggest conference center you can mortgage, and prayer as the phrases of the week on a PowerPoint! Though Christianity didn't stick for me, I can still take a lot of pleasure in an Episcopalian evensong if the choral director is ambitious. I can't imagine why you'd go to a Megachurch if you didn't think you'd be damned for not doing so.

(To me this explains why evangelicals fall for C.S. Lewis, even though doctrinally and in his own life choices he ought to repel them: it's their first exposure to an actual, serious, beautiful, rigorous tradition--and it's safely not Catholic.)
posted by praemunire at 7:54 PM on January 20, 2016 [3 favorites]


I would think that the closing of schools would have more of an impact.

I can't muster any sympathy for the closed churches. The more of these institutions of hate that close, the better. I know not all churches are pots of bubbling hate, preaching all sorts of insane things about groups of people that don't fit their world view. But most of them are, or it seem to me. So the more that close can be only a good thing. I just hope some of the kinder churches survive.
posted by james33 at 3:41 AM on January 21, 2016


But most of them are, or it seem to me.
Based on what, though? I actually live here, and I think there's something to the idea that churches, like other local institution, breed a sense of neighborliness that ultimately breaks down barriers.

I'm thinking specifically of this article, about two elderly Eastern Iowa women who got married in 2014 after being together for 72 years.
More than 30 people were in the First Christian pews that day, and the Rev. Linda Hunsaker presided.

It was no small decision. No gay couple had ever married in the church.

"It's Vivian and Nonie," Hunsaker said of the decision to marry them. "They had been in the church since 1947. They had been deacons and in the choir. We thought of them as a couple. Nobody asked them, but you can't not know. In the church directory, they have their picture together.

"When you don't know somebody, it's easy to make statements about right and wrong. But when you know someone, have a relationship with them, which is what God wants, you want the best for them."
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 4:26 AM on January 21, 2016 [4 favorites]


> So my fears as my child grows include finding a new community for me/us. Because one day he won't want "mama nuk" anymore. And then what

Treating that as an AskMe, because I've been there: Join a co-op preschool. Set up play groups. Volunteer at his elementary school or the library or the food bank the hospital or what have you. Campfire or Scouting. Your neighborhood association. Organize an annual block party. Makers clubs. Bird watching clubs. Craft nights. Book groups. Volksmarching. Join a band. The Y. Welcome immigrants to your city. Get really into your city's sports teams. Teach adult literacy.

There's no shortage of good people out there doing good things, and people who want community and scheduled face-to-face meetings.
posted by The corpse in the library at 10:31 AM on January 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


Though Christianity didn't stick for me, I can still take a lot of pleasure in an Episcopalian evensong if the choral director is ambitious.

I have a vague feeling that my mom had stopped functionally believing in most of the official tenets of the Episcopal Church by the 80s, but the final straw that actually got her to stop going every week in the mid 2000s was when the longtime organist left and was replaced by someone who, while well-meaning, either didn't have the technical ability to play the hymns uptempo or just thought that aesthetically church music should sound serious and somber and so played everything at a extremely stately pace. My mom stuck with that church through decades of pointless, excruciating vestry drama and multiple well-liked priests being run out of town by an altar guild gone mad with power, but a month of listening to Onward Christian Soldiers as a dirge and she was gone.
posted by Copronymus at 5:02 PM on January 21, 2016 [5 favorites]


was replaced by someone who, while well-meaning, either didn't have the technical ability to play the hymns uptempo

In the Garden of Eden, Honey...
posted by clawsoon at 11:46 AM on January 25, 2016


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