Country Church near Grace, Mississippi

Churches like this exist all over the South. The buildings lean hard on all sides; not a square wall exists. Paint is often peeling. Roofs are sagging. Foundations are irregular. It’s doubtful many of them are up to legal code. Yet these worn out structures remain gathering spots each week for local residents seeking connection.

This particular church sits off a county road just outside of Grace, Mississippi. it’s a tiny unincorporated town located in Issaquena County, which is mostly farmland. Fewer than 1500 people live in the entire county. There is no stoplight. There are no schools.

There. Are. No. Schools.

But there is a prison.

And there are churches like this one, Many of them. It seems there may be as many churches as there are people. I wonder what the ratio of churches to schools is in the Mississippi Delta.

As I sit here this morning considering this photo and writing what comes to mind, I am next to a window in my new home. I now live in rural Alabama. The Black Belt region is this state’s version of the Mississippi Delta. I’ve barely been here a week, and I can see the similarities.

But rural-ness is not a unified existence in America. Rural here is not the same as rural there. I’m not quite sure of the specifics yet, but I’m curious to uncover them. I suspect most of those answers are rooted in generational issues of race and class plus opportunity and suppression. All of it driven by the desire to control land.

If you drive through Issaquena County, Mississippi you will see miles and miles and miles of land. In the summer this acreage will be filled with soybeans and corn and rice and cotton. In winter it will be gray dirt. On Sundays, people will emerge from who-knows-where to sit in churches such as the one in this photo, on the edges of these fields of growth. All will be seeking connection to something more than the world they physically know.

I suspect that happens in Pike County, Alabama too. I suspect it is the same, and I suspect it is different. And I wonder if the people sitting in the pews of these rickety old buildings are actually just seeking each other.