World Cup Churches 12. Poland

Continuing a series of blogs heading round the 32 qualifying countries in the 2022 World Cup - I will pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is an exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.

Poland is rare among European nations in having increasing numbers of churches.  The land of Poland has an unfortunate story of being a very suitable place to wage war, and as everyone knows, war is a historical preoccupation of Europeans.  Even as I write this blog, Poland is only over the border from Europe's latest war in Ukraine.

Perhaps it is heartening that such a troubled area has increasing numbers of Christian (mostly Catholic) sites.  Here is on such church, in a former Nazi SS Headquarters building:

This Church at Birkenau is, however, very controversial.   It is just down the road, as it were, from the infamous Birkenau Camp - also known as Auschwitz 2. Whilst, looked at from the perspective of Christian - Catholic - tunnel vision it is surely heartening to see a place of such dishonour being redeemed for Christian worship, this is most certainly not how it is perceived by the Jewish community.  And as such it brilliantly illustrates the problem of Church History.

There were, of course Catholic Christians (and other Christians) who died in Nazi Concentration Camps.  But the broad sweep of the Catholic response to Nazism was ambiguity - at best.  Pope Pius's attitude has been the subject of volumes of claim and counter-claim but that his official position was largely neutral is the best that can be said for him.

Hence the problem with this church.  Had it met in the building when the Nazis were there - and challenged them - it might have its rightful place.  But for the Jews it simply reminds them that they were ignored then and ignored now.

Churches need to be good news first and buildings second.

World Cup Churches 11. Mexico

Continuing a series of blogs heading round the 32 qualifying countries in the 2022 World Cup - I will pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is an exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.

The three countries with the most self-identifying Christians are at this World Cup.  We have already seen a church in the nation with the most - the USA.  Here is the nation with the third most Christians - Mexico.  Overwhelmingly - though cracks are showing - Mexico is a Roman Catholic country.  Like some of its cousins in this respect Mexico entertains some of the more unlikely Christian features of overwhelmingly Catholic communities.  The local expression of this we are featuring is Iglesia del Honguito.

If your Spanish is no better than mine you may feel that this is the Church (Iglesia) in the town of Honguito.  But this Church is in Chignahuapan.  

Honguito is the Spanish for 'mushroom'.

The Church of the Mushroom is not very big (though Mexico has plenty of vast churches).  It gets more visits than might be expected though because it contains - you guessed it - a mushroom (which is itself not very big).  Found in 1880 by a local farmer it has markings that, with the help of a magnifying glass, has a representation of the crucified Christ:

To answer the obvious 140 year old question, the mushroom is now petrified.  It is a popular object of veneration in true Mexico-Catholic fashion and, whatever it does for local Catholics, it leaves an English Protestant like me with nothing left to say but with eyes slightly agog.

World Cup Churches 10. Saudi Arabia

 Continuing a series of blogs heading round the 32 qualifying countries in the 2022 World Cup - I will pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is a exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.

Saudi Arabia, on the face of it, is uniquely unchristian among the nations qualifying for this World Cup in neighbouring Qatar.  If you are a Saudi Arabian and convert to Christianity you receive the death penalty.  This makes public profession of Christianity non-existent - or very short.  

Long before Islam - and longer still before anyone in the Americas had heard about Jesus - there were Christian monastic communities in the Arabian desert.  Encounters with these shapes some of the responses to Christianity in the Koran.  But these are long past, and only ruins remain, the latest discovery being made by a dune buggy hitting something hard in the sand.

For the past ten years or so there have been serious noises, however, about the Saudi's allowing a Church building or two for the Christians who do live and work in the nation - as has happened in Qatar.  It will help to make Saudi Arabia look more internationally acceptable of course.  But nothing has happened so far - despite a visit by the Pope.

Yet these Christian workers constitute a significant part of the population.  Remarkably, this means that the Christian population of Saudi Arabia is proportionately larger (in some cases far larger) than in several other World Cup qualifying nations - Morocco, Iran, Senegal, Japan and Tunisia. (Perhaps more astonishingly and sadly it is larger than the proportion of Christians in Israel.)

So there is a church in Saudi Arabia, but with none of the trappings of gothic architecture, freedom to convert the local populace or freedom to meet at all except domestically.  In some ways more like the church as it was very long ago.

World Cup Churches 9. Argentina

Continuing a series of blogs heading round the 32 qualifying countries in the 2022 World Cup - I will pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is a exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.

Moving into Group C we come to Argentina, known for its Catholicism and where Jorge Bergoglio was born. Jorge was not previously on our radar perhaps but we now know him as Pope Francis.  Notwithstanding its Catholic culture, Argentina has had great growth in non-Catholic churches, perhaps symbolised in the evangelist Luis Palau, also born in Argentina.

Forgive me returning to a theme from my blogs of the 2018 World Cup as I single out  from Argentina Bethel Chapel, Gaiman in the Chubut Valley.

Built in 1913, though opened in 1914, this is one of several Welsh-speaking chapels in the Chubut River valley in Patagonia.  It is the largest, and best-built of them all; it is also open for worship (some are just historical curiosities) and it is related to Methodism in Argentina, so part of a living Christian family of churches.

These Welsh-speaking Chapels remind us of the cultural significance of church - something we will see in other blogs, including Saudi Arabia.  The Welsh Settlers who made that valley their home created somethig the general nation could never have invented without them.  Every local church has a significance, some astonishing like this, others more 'normal' to their environment.  But it is local churches that help shape the story of communities the world over.