Refine Search

Why the Chapels Are Closing

CHURCHES, chapels, choirs, and coal—as recently as 50 years ago, they were sure signs that you were in the mining valleys of South Wales. It seemed that every hundred yards, you came across either a Welsh or an English Baptist chapel or the equivalent for the Methodists, Calvinistic Methodists, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and so on. Since many Welsh people spoke their national language, nearly every religion had separate chapels for each tongue. Five decades of television and changing values have radically altered all of that.

Welshman Islwyn Jones, who lives in Blaenclydach in the Rhondda Valley, has spent years chronicling the fate of the dozens of chapels of the Rhondda. The local paper, the Rhondda Leader, published a list of nearly one hundred chapels, most dating from the 19th century, indicating their present status. The report stated: “These great buildings were the heart of Rhondda as it passed through the boom years of coal to the ultimate decline of these two pillars [religion and coal] of valley life.”

The list serves as an epitome of the collapse of religion’s influence, not only in Wales but in many parts of Europe. Sixty-eight chapels were listed as “now demolished.” Nineteen had been adapted to other uses. Some examples: “converted into an Aikido martial arts club,” “changed to flats [apartments],” “altered to warehouse,” “converted to a shopping area,” “converted into a drug store.” One that was not listed, in Penygraig, was converted many years ago into a Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses for the flourishing Rhondda Congregation.

As the Bible foretold regarding “Babylon the Great,” the world empire of false religion, its symbolic waters, the support of the peoples, are drying up in many parts of the world. Soon the political elements of the world will turn against religion as they “carry out [God’s] thought” to devastate false religion, which has universally blasphemed Jehovah God’s name and purpose.—Revelation 17:5, 15-17.a

[Footnote]