I was sitting in a wooden pew in the three-hundred-year-old cathedral in Granada, Spain, last week, taking in all the grandeur. Massive marble columns rose toward soaring arched ceilings. Gold-plated organ pipes and ornate religious fixtures adorned the room. Between the massive marble columns stood a series of painted panels, running the length of the cathedral, bearing the same words in several languages: “The Art of Evangelizing.” 

Yet, for all its beauty and scale, the pews sat empty. The cathedral felt more like a tourist attraction than a gathering place for people seeking to know and worship God. The evidence of the church’s collusion with empire was impossible to miss. The space was built to tell a story, and it told it well—including the parts I didn’t want to see. I sat there torn, both inspired and overwhelmed. I loved the beauty of it—the artistry, the ambition, the sheer human effort poured into honoring God in a space. And yet, I grieved the reality that this cathedral was built in the shadow of the Spanish Inquisition, amid a history of forced conversions, religious persecution, and violence carried out in the name of Christianity. 

I was troubled by the irony of those signs—The Art of Evangelizing—given the cathedral’s history. Not because I’m against evangelizing. I love the Church, and I believe that the good news of Jesus really is good news for the whole world. What troubled me wasn’t the message on the banners. It was the possibility that the Church could hold something so true and still get so much so wrong at the same time… Continue reading via Cultivating Communities on Substack