![\"IMG_1630\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/628\/2014\/12\/IMG_1630-1024x681.jpg\")
Sometimes the stories in the news seem overwhelming, don\u2019t they? Each day brings another tale of intolerance, injustice and tragedy. So today I want to tell you about a place that has restored some of my faith in the goodness of humanity: the Saints Center for Culture and the Arts<\/a> in Stuart, Iowa.<\/p>\n Its story begins in the early 1900s when the Catholic community in this small town west\u00a0of Des Moines decided to build a church. And not just any church: they wanted a BIG church, one that was loosely modeled after\u00a0St. Mark\u2019s Cathedral in Venice. The church that opened in 1908 was\u00a0a blend of Byzantine and Romanesque styles, with an\u00a0exuberantly Baroque interior complete with handpainted frescos, stained glass from Germany, altars of Italian marble and a massive copper dome 90 feet above the ground.<\/p>\n For nearly a century\u00a0this\u00a0church, known as All Saints, was a regional landmark, voted the \u201cMost Beautiful Church in Iowa\u201d by readers of the Des Moines Register<\/em> and well-loved by the entire community of Stuart.<\/p>\n And then on an August day in 1995, an arsonist poured 25 gallons of gas inside All Saints\u00a0and ignited a conflagration that drew 20\u00a0fire departments from a 50 mile radius. Despite the best efforts of the firefighters, by the time the flames were extinguished\u00a0virtually everything in the church was destroyed except for its exterior walls. The arsonist, a man named\u00a0Charles Willard\u00a0from Des Moines, was motivated by a hatred of the Catholic Church and a desire to (in his words) \u201ctake the heart and soul out of a small\u00a0town.\u201d<\/p>\n Willard was caught (which wasn\u2019t hard, since he sent letters to two bishops and a TV station claiming credit for the crime). He later served a dozen\u00a0years in prison. The town of Stuart, meanwhile, struggled with the dilemma of what to do with the shell of the\u00a0building. Catholic leaders\u00a0had decided that the cost of rebuilding was too great and that instead a new church would be built on the outskirts of town.\u00a0The loss of Stuart\u2019s\u00a0most famous\u00a0landmark was a blow to the entire community.<\/p>\n And then\u00a0a miracle occured.<\/p>\n Well, in more prosaic terms, a lot of things came together, but it\u2019s hard not to see the entire process as somewhat\u00a0miraculous. The citizens of Stuart, a town that hadn\u2019t passed a bond issue since the 1950s, approved a $1.7 million\u00a0measure\u00a0to help fund the building\u2019s\u00a0restoration. The state of Iowa contributed grant money. Individual citizens gave donations. By 2007, $4 million had been raised, and over the next two years a massive restoration project was undertaken.<\/p>\n In 2009 the church opened once again, this time as the Saints Center for Culture and the Arts<\/a>. Today it hosts a wide variety of special events, including weddings, concerts, theater performances, and reunions.<\/p>\n When I visited the Saints Center recently, I found it\u00a0hard to believe that this remarkable\u00a0building had been reduced nearly to ruins. Today its main hall is a warm,\u00a0inviting public\u00a0space, filled with light from the\u00a0clerestory windows underneath the dome that once again tops the structure. White walls alternate with\u00a0columns of exposed brickwork from 1908. While much of the church\u2019s Christian\u00a0iconography has been removed, its\u00a0original St. Joseph altar is kept in an alcove in the main hall. Darkened\u00a0and damaged\u00a0by the flames, it is\u00a0kept as a reminder of the fire.<\/p>\n According to Dick Doherty, one of the prime movers in the drive to restore the Saints Center, the building\u2019s\u00a0rebirth has been a catalyst for growth for the entire town. \u201cThe Saints Center has helped revitalize Stuart,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s become a very popular place for weddings, in particular, and that\u00a0has helped other local businesses like caterers and hotels. Thanks in part to the money that\u2019s been brought into the town from the center, we\u2019ve been able to build a new city hall, school, and aquatic center.\u201d<\/p>\n The fire has had another\u00a0surprising legacy: \u00a0the Learning Museum for Religious Tolerance<\/a>. Housed in two kiosks at the Saints Center, this self-guided, online resource explores Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism<\/a>, Judaism, Indigenous Beliefs, and Chinese Traditional Religions, as well as the path of atheists and agnostics. It includes\u00a0video\u00a0interviews with people living within\u00a060 miles of the church who follow the\u00a0varied traditions. They talk about their beliefs, rituals and hopes for peace among all religions.<\/p>\n \u201cWe wanted to show that in the end, tolerance is much stronger than hate,\u201d says Liz Gilman, who headed the online museum project.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s one of the pieces\u00a0of information about the Saints Center that I found\u00a0most intriguing: after the fire, structural engineers found that the steel beams in the church\u2019s\u00a0walls had actually been made stronger because of being tempered by the intense heat of the fire.<\/p>\n That\u2019s what tragedy can do, is that not right? Sometimes it destroys, and sometimes it makes things stronger. That\u2019s true for buildings, and it\u2019s true for people too.<\/p>\n Someday I hope you can visit the Saints Center, to see what can happen when people refuse to let intolerance and hate have the last word.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sometimes the stories in the news seem overwhelming, don\u2019t they? Each day brings another tale of intolerance, injustice and tragedy. So today I want to tell you about a place that has restored some of my faith in the goodness of humanity: the Saints Center for Culture and the Arts in Stuart, Iowa. Its story […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2582,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[831,443,633,685],"class_list":["post-10608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity","tag-iowa","tag-iowa-holy-sites","tag-saints-center-for-culture-and-the-arts","tag-stuart"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/628\/2014\/12\/allsaints13.jpg\")
![\"IMG_1637\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/628\/2014\/12\/IMG_16371-692x1024.jpg\")
![\"The](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/628\/2014\/12\/loft.jpg\")