Pilgrim Baptist Church: what happened and what’s next

Rob Sherman, an atheist activist based in Chicago, #39599c; text-decoration: none">reported yesterday that the government terminated a $1 million grant to help rebuild a historic South Side church.

Sherman had filed a lawsuit against the state officials, including former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, who authorized funding Pilgrim Baptist Church.  But now, there’s no plan in place for what should be done with the ruins of the 115-year-old building.

When the church was all but destroyed by fire more than three years ago, Chicagoans mourned the loss of the building where gospel was born.  It had garnered national attention in the 1930s for its music director Thomas Dorsey and later for gospel singers like Aretha Franklin.

The building, designed by Chicago architects Adler & Sullivan, was an official city landmark, so then-Governor Rod Blagojevich pledged $1 million to help rebuild the non-church part of the building, administrative offices that housed the church’s school and historic documents.

Even before Sherman, the “Godless in Chicago” blogger, filed a legal complaint two years after the fire, people were questioning the constitutionality of the grant, citing that the state’s constitution does not permit publicly funding church-run schools.  Sherman, in 2008, alleged that it was impossible to limit the funding to the church’s “secular” functions and the grant was unconstitutional.

I agree with the legal arguments in Sherman’s filing (text #39599c; text-decoration: none">here); the government directly handing money to religious institutions, for both religious ends as well as historical/cultural ones, seems to violate the most general notions we have for the separation of church and state.

The statements he makes on his blog, though, go beyond anti-church-and-state, towards-anti-church-itself. 

“Pilgrim Baptist Church remains a decrepit blight on the community, with no prospect of it being rebuilt in the foreseeable future.  Indeed, it is a perfect metaphor for what heaven is:  Once you look past the phony fancy facade of pearly gates, you realize that there's nothing there.  No god, no people -- nothing.  It's completely empty, just like the above picture of Pilgrim Baptist,” Sherman writes. “They ought to tear down the remains of that building and let the community move on.”

I can see why Sherman and area atheists are celebrating the victory of constitutional law over misappropriation of taxpayers’ dollars.  In some ways, I guess that’s something every American should celebrate, first-amendment-style.

But given the history of this specific building, of the now-crummy-looking Pilgrim Baptist Church, I’m still holding out hope that the funding will come. Already a handful of Adler & Sullivan’s buildings have been demolished (the Schiller Theater, the Stock Exchange and earlier buildings such as the Troescher and Ryerson, #39599c; text-decoration: none">according to the city’s Landmark Division).  For the sake of the Bronzeville neighborhood and in honor of Chicago’s architectural history, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Sherman’s ought-to doesn’t come true.

 Photo by bluebike, Flickr Creative Commons.   

Kate Shellnutt
I’m a freelance religion reporter and blogger for the Little Things. I majored in religion and journalism as an undergrad, and I'm now completing my master's in journalism at Medill. More