It is often true that to love rock music is to love the cities that give creative birth to rock cultures, and New York City is one of those cities. I am an unabashed lover of New York and experience a thoroughgoing geographic consolation almost every moment I am within the five boroughs. One part of that satisfaction is the discovery of new pictures of Christianity that present themselves unpredictably, yet with a reliable frequency. These are like found urban theological objects. One occurred this evening as I was walking through Greenwich Village in Manhattan. On the southeast corner of 13th and 7th, I was surprised to notice a subway exit running flush with the side of a church, with the stairs up from the subway emerging from somewhere down below, way under the church. It turns out that the church is the Church of the Village (United Methodist). I took a picture, and you can see the subway egress on the left, marked by the two red spheres above it.

For those who are not fans or frequenters of cities, churches, or subways, let me take a moment to emphasize how unusual it is for a church to sit atop a subway passage and to have it empty out basically like a gash on the church’s side, onto the sidewalk.

I could not help but appreciate this new picture of Christianity, which I interpreted as: The city gets us out from under the church.

Tom Beaudoin

New York City