Prairie churches

A well-made documentary.

Lutheran churches were well-represented in the film, as were those serving Roman, Greek and Ukrainian Catholics and various Orthodox denominations. In Canada, Anglican and United churches were also featured. Interestingly, I didn’t see any Methodist or Baptist churches in the film.

(1) Regular participation in religious worship services has become much less a part of everyday life for Americans over the past few decades, and (2) the number or farm family residents per square mile in farming country has dwindled greatly, due largely to the advent of large, powerful tractors and other field machinery capable of relatively high-speed transit on public roads from one large tract of land (much of it rented) to another.
Also, one very labor-intensive farming enterprise, milk production, has become much more concentrated in a few very large operations very much factory-like, cows functioning as machines for converting large volumes of raw materials into milk. Fewer family members are required for large scale grain producing operations than for milk and livestock (meat) production, which also has shifted to fewer, larger enterprises. Ergo, fewer rural residents.
One result: Many of those beautiful old churches stand unused and more or less abandoned.

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