Veteran author and journalist Frye Gaillard has an interesting cover story in Creative Loafing on the state of Charlotte’s churches. There’s lots of good first-hand reporting, but Gaillard is saddled with a title — “Holy Wars” — that makes it seem the piece is about conflict when it turns out to be more about how there is less distance between various views of how religion fits in a community than there has been at certain times in the past.
Gaillard frets there isn’t enough social activism or prickly messages of social justice coming from pulpits around town, but it isn’t clear exactly what wrongs he thinks need to be righted short of imposition of a European-style welfare state.
And I wished Gaillard had tackled how the city’s growing Hispanic population affects its churches, a demographic trend that dwarfs all others. Still, well worth a read.
