So, this is what I've been ruminating over for the past day or so, ever since I was walking around cold while everything was closed and also feeling slightly spiritual--when did churches start locking their doors? In movies, TV shows, books, etc, characters are still often portrayed simply walking into houses of worship when it suits them. Not to mention that these same cultural productions occasionally depict homeless or inebriated people sleeping in churches when they have nowhere else to go. And yet at two in the afternoon on a Monday morning, the churches around here are locked. WTF?

I see a number of problems here. I suspect the door-locking thing originating in fears of vandalism and the like. However: how many people in a town this size (2000 census: just over 5000) are going to walk into the Puffer United Methodist Church in mid-day and vandalize it? I could maybe see locking the buildings after dark as a crime-deterrent, but why during the day? It doesn't follow.

However, my big concern is really with the implications of the act itself. First, why if God is always there, always listening, and cares (and for the record, I don't argue against that position), would the doors of holy buildings be locked except on specific days at specific times? It strikes me as a rather contradictory position to take; it also would seem to suggest that religious feelings etc should be reserved for the proper time and place, i.e., Sunday morning services. Which sort of works against the idea of integrating religion or spirituality into daily life, something that many religious leaders advocate. If you lock the house of worship except on certain occasions, how are people to feel connected to it or its ideas except when allowed in?
Secondly--and this is where I would almost argue that the doors shouldn't be locked even at night--one complaint one hears often from fundies, right-wingers, and even moderate- or left-leaning Church groups in America is the decline in relevance that the church plays in the lives of those around it. But honestly, I feel sort of like we're stuck in the first half-hour of Sister Act here; you can't credibly complain that the community ignores you if you shut yourself away from the community. Moreover, doing so would seem to contradict the very spirit of Christianity, which advocates living as Jesus strove to: walking among the downtrodden, helping the sick and poor and those desiring spiritual or physical aid. Which is probably why for so long in America, the church was such an important part of the social landscape. It was truly a community center, not just a place to receive weekly lectures on the way to salvation. Well, of course our Puritan origins had something to do with it, too, but my point is that the church's participation in the daily lives of the citizens seemed to have coincided with the era in which most people in this country belonged to or at least regularly attended a church. People were more religious because it wasn't a segregated part of their lives. The church building itself served multiple functions, and spirituality infused the rest of life to a much greater extent and for more people. So maybe the key to creating a sense of church/religion as relevant to the average American would be to *gasp* unlock the damn building?
Finally, I would argue that this moves away from being a matter of religious feeling, and has the potential to turn church and religion into the same kind of authoritarian structure that made so many of us hate public education: show up when we tell you to, sit, shut up, and let us deliver truth--as defined and organized by us--unto your minds. Then get out of here. Doors closed & locked. Makes it rigid, structured, and less an organic part of life, less integrated.

But then, I'm not a regular church goer myself, so what do I know?