United Presbyterian Church, Laramie Wyoming.

These are photographs of the United Presbyterian Church in Laramie.  I'm unsure of the age of the church, but it's a large modern structure with some interesting traditional elements.

St. Andrew's Lutheran Church and Campus Center, Laramie Wyoming

This is the Lutheran St. Andrew's Church and Campus Center in Laramie.  It's actually not very far away from another Lutheran church in Laramie, but presumably was built here to service the needs of Lutheran students at UW.

Laramie Valley Chapel, Laramie Wyoming.

 

This is the Laramie Valley Chapel, a Baptist church which is an extraordinary large example of a Prairie Gothic church.  The church must be relatively new as it did not exist when I lived in Laramie, although that's quite a few years ago.

Muslim Students Association, Laramie Wyoming

This is a bad photograph of the former church in Laramie Wyoming which is now the Muslim Students Association.  The church in the background is St. Paul's United church of Christ.  This building was clearly originally a Christian church, but I don't know the history of the building, so I don't know what it was.

For classification purposes, I'm listing this under the label "mosque" but I don't think it really is. Rather, its a center. The Muslim students at UW have had a center for quite some time, but up until this building was acquired I do not think they had one that was purpose built as a religious building.  Indeed, when I was a student at UW their center was in an apartment building even though there were a lot of Muslim students at that time.

This photo was taken from my truck as this is in a residential neighborhood and, given the context of the times, stopping to take a better photograph probably would have looked a bit odd, so this bad photo will have to suffice.

Lex Anteinternet: You may not be interested in war, but war is inter...

Lex Anteinternet: You may not be interested in war, but war is inter...: "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you." Attributed to Leon Trotsky, but perhaps apocryphal.   ...

First Catholic Mass in Wyoming

This entry would also probably make more sense in our Today In Wyoming's History entries, but here is the location of the first Catholic Mass in Wyoming, which was offered by Father Pierre DeSmet in 1840.

Narcissa Whitman and Eliza Spalding at the 1836 Rendezvous

This entry more likely belongs at our Today In Wyoming's History blog, as it isn't so much of a church item (well maybe it is) as a history item.  Note how particularly early this Oregon Trail event was, 1836.  Well before the big flood of travelers starting going over the trail in the late 1840s.

St. Anne Catholic Church, Big Piney Wyoming

This is St. Anne's Catholic Church in Big Piney, Wyoming.  The church was built in 1934.

Community Congregational Church, Big Piney Wyoming

The Big Piney Community Congregational Church was built the same year that the Episcopal Church was, 1914.

St. John the Baptist Episcopal Church, Big Piney Wyoming.

This classic Prairie Gothic church was built by the Episcopal Diocese of Wyoming in Big Piney in 1914.  Much of the western part of the state, as I'm learing, was settled really for the first time about that time.

Christ Lutheran Church, Rawlins Wyoming

This is Christ Lutheran Church in Rawlins, Wyoming.

I don't know any of the details of this church, other than it rather obviously has modern architecture.

Roads to the Great War: Faith in the Fight: Religion and the American Sold...

Roads to the Great War: Faith in the Fight: Religion and the American Sold...: Faith in the Fight: Religion and the American Soldier in the Great War by Jonathan H. Ebel Princeton University Press, 2010 ...

Roads to the Great War: Father Duffy: Why Was He Beloved?

Roads to the Great War: Father Duffy: Why Was He Beloved?: At Times Square New York Father Francis Duffy was the chaplain of New York's 69th Infantry, which fought in France as the 165t...

Lex Anteinternet: What Are You Reading?

Over on our most active blog, Lex Anteinternet: What are you reading?:

What are you reading?

A new trailing thread, dedicated to what we're currently reading.

And. . . we hope. . . with participation from you.

What are you reading right  now? Add it down in the commentary section
__________________________________________________________________________________

June 21, 2016

Give Me Eighty Men

I'm presently reading Give Me Eighty Men by Shannon Smith. It's a history of the Fetterman Fight, and a history of the history of the Fetterman Fight. I'll review it when I'm done, but I'll note that the favorable mention of the book by the authors of The Heart of All That Is caused me to pick it up, even though I'd been inclined to previously avoid it.

So far, I'm enjoying it, and its certainly raising a lot questions in my mind about the Fetterman battle, although I'm reserving my judgment on various things so far.

Stop over and let us know what you're reading!

That thread:  What Are You Reading?

Alma Temple, Denver Colorado

I know absolutely nothing whatsoever about this structure, or about the the institution that apparently owns it.  It belongs, apparently, to a Protestant group that maintains a radio station in addition to some sort of services.  The structure has an obvious Greek Revival style and was built in 1923.

First Baptist Church, Denver Colorado

This New England style church is located in the Capitol Hill district of Denver. I don't know much about it otherwise, but it is right across the street from the Capitol Building.

Updated photograph from a different angle, as I happened to be going by it at a later date than that, five years ago, when I first photographed it.

Roads to the Great War: Veteran of the Great War and Saint: Padre Pio

Roads to the Great War: Veteran of the Great War and Saint: Padre Pio: Great War veteran Francesco Pio of Pietrelcina (25 May 1887–23 September 1968), a Catholic priest from Italy, was canonized as a saint by ...

White Memorial Chapel, Salt Lake City

St. Paul Lutheran Church, Denver Colorado

The purpose of this blog is really to depict churches, not to comment on any one religion or church.   However, whenever you post photographs of varying churches, you are going to sooner or later end up getting into some sort of comment or controversy.

This is a photograph I took quite awhile back, 2012 in fact, and I never completed the post.  The reason is that I don't like to have a hand in creating confusion.  Whenever I post a photograph I always try to look the church up before I post the photo.  In doing that, I found St. Paul's entry to be very confusion at that time, 2012. 

What I found was that the church was Lutheran, and very obviously in the "liberal" Lutheran camp, but it offered a service that mirrored Catholic services.  It was pretty clearly angling for disaffected Catholics who had some reason that they were separating themselves from the Church but who missed what the Mass looked like.  That made me a bit queasy, well more than a bit queasy.

In finding this old photograph, I looked them back up and its more confusing than ever.  They have a Catholic Priest who is offering a Mass on Saturday nights while the Lutheran service is on Sunday.  The website claims that the community at the Church is Catholic and Lutheran and the website suggests, whether it means to or not, that there's no prohibition to the two faiths commingling without restriction.

Well, there certainly is, and neither the Lutheran or the Catholic Church take that position.

Rather, what the site cites to is a declaration by Pope Benedict some years ago that one of Martin Luther's statements was not inconsistent with Catholic belief, if properly understood.  

This gets into an entire really long area of discussion which I'm not going to go down. Rather, however, I'm noting this as this is a pretty old church, but frankly it fits into a certain "liberal" Christian set of beliefs that does not define either faith in the main.  And this stands to be deceptive, particularly for people who are travelers.  If a Church stands in opposition to the main body of its faith, or if it is on the fringe of it, it ought to just flat out state that.  After all, even the two very close "lungs" of the Apostolic Churches, the Catholics and the Orthodox, do not seek to hide their differences from each other.  The "Anglican Catholis", who use the Catholic name as part of their identify, are very blunt on their websites and statements that they are not in union with Rome and do not purport to be Roman Catholic Churches. 

I'm not saying that deception is intentionally being engaged in here, and I'm not commenting on the licitly of the Masses (about which I know nothing), but I am saying that when people take a view that's out of the mainstream on things, they'd do well to note that, least they create problems for others.  In matters of religion, for the Faithful, this is not a small matter.

I'm going to go ahead and post the photo of this church here.  But in doing so, I'm frankly going to note that there's another Catholic Church that's clearly in the Catholic mainstream, right downtown, just a couple of blocks away.  That church, Holy Ghost, is unquestionably Catholic and,  like this Lutheran Church, it also has a very well known social mission, that being to the poor.  I don't know where the nearest Lutheran church is, but I'd note it if I did.