#39 - I have set before thee an open door

Summers among the abandoned churches of the American South

The floorboards groaned under our weight. First the dark, then the dust, then the dim shape of the cruciform. Cobwebs from the mid-century spanned the rafters, and dust—half an inch thick—covered the bible on the altar. Vines encroached through the narthex, and behind us—out the double red doors—a clay road twisted beyond the pines.

This was our fourth summer in the churches. Drive the right road, far enough from the cities, drive slow enough, look hard enough, and you're bound to find one. Some abandoned for decades; others kept barely breathing by a few locals who tend the churchyards—and the black mold.

Come the weekend, we'd load our tripods and our cameras into the back of our Fit and pick a direction. Deep into Georgia, or along the South Carolina line. Never interstates, always state routes or roads named after families long buried in those pine forests. Sometimes a historic marker gave one away. Other times, we'd luck upon one. As they were when their congregations sweated in the pews years ago, the doors stood open, inviting.

The walls—once pristine white or that peculiar shade of ecclesiastical green that seemed reserved only for Southern churches—now peeled in delicate layers like ancient scrolls unraveling. Paint bubbled and cracked under decades of humid summers, creating accidental frescoes across the plaster.

The heat was a character of its own. Even at sunset, even with the doors flung wide or the roof caved in, the Southern summer pressed in—thick, close, relentless. We’d sweat through our shirts before the golden hour had even begun.

Light poured through warped glass—clear in places, stained in fragments—casting prisms across dusty floors and forgotten corners. Westering light could transform a plain altar into something mysterious and holy. It set the dust aglow like flaming tongues of fire.

There was a stillness in those spaces. Not silence—the floors groaned, the wind whistled through cracked and rattling windows—but a deep and abiding stillness. The kind that holds you still. Even emptied of people—perhaps because they were empty—these old churches still offered sanctuary.

Cait had an eye for what I missed—the flicker of dust in a shaft of light, the perfect angle of a collapsed beam beside a sunlit pulpit. I focused on the broader structure, the bones of the place. We moved in rhythm, quiet and deliberate. Cameras clicked. Now and then we’d whisper about a particular find—or warn each other about the buckling floor beneath our boots.

In one middle-Georgia church, among the usual decay was a “Jesus Loves Me” Sunday school attendance tracker still mounted on the wall. The penciled names had nearly vanished, worn away by time and the damp. You might make out David and Connor and Candice and Alexis and John. A few colored stickers and check marks still dotted the board, marking attendances long forgotten.

Then we’d pack up in the late evening. Our backs were sore from crouching and stretching for the right angles. We would listen to Paul Simon or Andrew Bird on the drive home. It took forever for the air conditioning to kick in. The sweat dried, leaving behind salt and dust. We would stop and get Taco Bell in whatever little town we passed through—the most consistently available staple in those parts.

And that was a pretty good weekend.

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