Ride to Church on Texas State Highway 21

During a recent drive through east Texas, on a 130 mile stretch of Hwy 21 that I have driven a number of times, each time noting to myself that ‘Dang! There are a lot of churches out here in the country!’,  I stopped to photograph all of the churches I saw, which turned out to be 40+.  Now mind you, I limited myself to photographing churches with Hwy 21 addresses. I didn’t even try to get pictures of churches that were *near* the highway if they weren’t visible from the road; however, in addition to all of these buildings I did photograph/see, I saw at least another 10-15 signs on the highway  advertising churches that were located on Hwy 21 side roads. I also limited myself to taking  pictures of  churches in between my town and the town I was visiting (except for one beautiful old brick Baptist church located in the oldest town in Texas that I couldn’t resist taking a picture of). Had I decided to take pictures of all of the churches IN my town or in my destination town, the number of pictures  would have doubled!   Clearly, they don’t call the South ‘the Bible belt’ for nothing, and East Texas is obviously a church-goin’ region. I enjoyed thinking about what kinds of people attended the various buildings, whether the congregations were affluent or poor, black or white, aging or filled with young families, evangelical, stoic or charismatic, growing or dwindling, and I can say that I have attended church in one of the buildings too: the LDS ward building is located in my stake.

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