Why Are There Locks On Churches?

A church by definition is a building used for religious activities and worship services.

A church is a building used for religious activities and worship services. The term in its architectural sense is most often used by Christians to refer to their religious buildings. In traditional Christian architecture, the church is often arranged in the shape of a Christian cross. The aisle represents the longest part of a cross and the junction of the cross is located at the altar area.

The Church of Saint Simeon Stylites in Aleppo, Syria is considered to be one of the oldest surviving church buildings in the world.

The earliest identified Christian church was a house church founded between 233 and 256. During the 11th through 14th centuries, a wave of building of cathedrals and smaller parish churches occurred across Western Europe.

Towers or domes are often added with the intention of directing the eye of the viewer towards the heavens and inspiring church visitors.

The effort and money spent building these giant halls are an example of what ‘religion’ meant to our society and culture as we evolved.

When the first settlers came to the ‘new world’ they constructed churches. They were not just a religious sanctuary but meeting halls and sometimes taverns. The church became the focal point for the masses to assemble.

Today they dot the communities with names like cathedrals, monasteries, mosques, temples and synagogues. They are still places for organized services but also a quiet space for anyone of faith to rest peacefully and internally contemplate. A church is like a library with a different search for knowledge.

So why do they put locks on churches?

Shouldn’t they be open to everyone?

The simple answer is today there are bad people that must be kept out like a fort. The complicated answer is that churches and congregations have become hi-tech besides all the graven images in polished gold; there is the electronics that promotes the ‘word’ to an ever-larger assembly. For a bandit that is tempting for a place without security. If the hooligans realized this was a place of worship they might thing twice about being smite.

So these houses of the holy select who can enter and who will be turned away.

Are the locks to keep evil out or God in?