I live in South Carolina’s Bluffton/Hilton Head Island region. Churches galore are to be found here to include three Catholic Churches. There are also gated communities galore here.
What’s interesting is that all of these gated communities have no houses of worship.
The largest gated community is Sea Pines on Hilton Head Island. Anyone can enter this gated community by paying $9 at one of the two gates. All kinds of tourist destinations are there. There is retail, restaurants and biking trails.
But there are no houses of worship.
Now, to be fair, when Sea Pines was being conceived in the 1950’s, land right outside of the gates was set aside for houses of worship. There are three churches in a row on Pope Avenue (not related to our papacy) that are on this land, Holy Family Catholic Church, St. Luke Anglican Church and Hilton Head Once United Methodist Church, St. Andrew’s By the Sea.
You can shop, eat and have fun in Seapines, but no worship is formally allowed there.
I write about this as I have been visiting a friend who is on the mend and in a rehab hospital in another gated community on Hilton Head. That particular gated community is very sterile and Twilight Zone-ish in that it is perfectly built, perfectly manicured and perfectly regulated. There is no retail or restaurants there as only residents and their guests and workers are allowed to enter. It is residential with a large country club and golf course, the closest thing to worship.
As I left the rehab center, around the top of the hour, I heard a carillon ringing out a nondescript melody. It sounded like a church’s carillon and the music, though secular, had a religious ethos.
It came from no house of worship but was simply the rehab’s way of giving a fake religious feel to the place.
Did I say Twilight Zone-ish?
5 comments:
The gated communities want revenue producing facilities on their premises. Nothing sinister
TJM,
Doesn't mean it can't be unnerving!!
Nick
Father, there may not be any restaurants, food food, or otherwise, at your friend's gated community. But when you arrive there, the community can say that they have a McDonald(s).
I know. Awful joke.
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Father, I will pray for your friend.
Pax.
Mark Thomas
Father:
Perhaps we can see this as an expression of our nation's animating principles and values.
Through history, all manner of communities and nations have been formed around something. Around or in fortifications; around a monastery; around a key junction of trade routes; around a strong leader who ends up being chief, duke or king. You get the idea.
Our beloved nation, uniquely I dare say, is not united around these things. We aren't united by an established religion or a history of clinging to each other for safety or common ancestry or a king. What is our commonality?
One of them, like it or not, is the notion of "choice." Our first states chose to rebel, and chose a new form of government. Much of our Constitution is about safeguarding our choices, beginning with our words, associations and religion.
I think a lot of this history can be discerned in how our communities are organized. Or not: food for thought.
Nick,
I am just pointing out the economic reality of how they operate. I would not choose a gated community without a Catholic Church unless there was one outside of the community but reasonably close. I have friends in The Villages in Florida and there is a Catholic Church in their section of The Villages but that community is humongous and certainly has the room!
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