Malls are disappearing.
The shopping centers nestled in America’s suburbs for the past several decades are closing faster than you could assemble a stuffed animal in a Build-a-Bear Workshop or try out the latest gadgets at the Sharper Image.
These modern ghost towns/apocalyptic movie sets—once filled with people of all ages, browsing, shopping, hanging out or lingering at the food court—are now silent, dark and tomb-like.
If you grew up with malls, it can seem surreal that they are shutting down since they had been such mainstays of suburban life. But the fate of these half-empty buildings (often described now as zombie malls) cannot be a huge surprise either. If I were to ask a show of hands right now from readers who had been to a mall recently, I am guessing there would not be many.
My first mall visit, a month before my 16th birthday, was part of a weekend tour of the Mother of God Community in Gaithersburg, Md. This was a charismatic Catholic community of about 1,000 members that my parents felt called to join, with me in tow.
That mall, which closed last year without any fanfare, now has a chain-link fence around its perimeter. Its glass entrance doors are boarded up as if gearing for a hurricane and weeds fill the pavement cracks in the empty parking lots.
The 100-acre property was anchored most recently by Macy’s, Sears, JCPenney and Lord & Taylor. But it has been in a state of limbo while waiting to be torn down and rebuilt as a mixed-use property with space for offices, housing, entertainment and…retail.
When I recently peered through the fencing, with its attached no-trespassing signs, a wave of nostalgia hit me like the aroma of fresh-baked Cinnabons: riding the escalators with friends, first jobs that had me in the mall during off-hours, browsing the record stores (which later morphed into CD stores), rejecting clothes my mom picked out for me and having the same thing happen in reverse with my daughter.
It is my first memory of this mall though, during the trip to Mother of God, that grabs a hold of me like a vaguely familiar Muzak tune over the loudspeaker. Thinking of it now, decades later, makes me recognize that some things which seem set in stone (or a mall’s concrete mix in this case) can still change. Not just shopping centers but religious movements as well.
We lived in Delaware, 100 miles, or really, another world away from what would be our new home. Since my parents’ surprise announcement that we were moving to this community had completely caught me off guard, they suggested I visit Mother of God with them and see it for myself.
On the weekend trip, a girl about my age, no doubt roped into the job, took me to Lakeforest Mall. Her job was either to talk about the community or to simply give me something to do. She had me before hello. I was taken in by the mall’s combined nature name, and drawn in by the sheer size—140 stores! It was definitely a step up from the one-level Blue Hen Mall I was used to.
At the time, Lakeforest was just two years old, so it was still new. To say it was magical seems quaint now but malls back then really did have a big appeal. Initial ones were even said to have influenced Walt Disney’s design of his EPCOT theme park.
So, there I was, talking with someone I had just met about what life was like in the Mother of God Christian community. It was a place that was not isolated like the Amish out in the country near where I had grown up, but instead was very much a part of this Maryland suburban enclave with its members primarily living in townhouses in the same few neighborhoods.
Over hot pretzels, I first asked about the rule that seemed to stand out the most—the no-dating rule for community teenagers. Yes, this was true; there was no dating until people were ready for marriage. But I was told the young people did a lot of fun things together and focused on friendships and, of course, God. I would have to think about this some more, but I left with questions and somehow the thought that I could possibly be OK with this.
And really, my 15-year-old self was onto something. In the 11 years I stayed in the community, initially on the coattails of my parents’ call and then on my own, choosing to stay as an adult and live with other adult single women in the community, I kept that combination of being OK with its positive aspects while also having questions.
Eventually, the lingering uneasiness about the community’s existence in its own bubble and the seemingly constant reminders of how its members fell short of God’s intentions led me to walk away.
But that day in the mall, and on countless visits afterward, I would never have thought this building with its ice-skating rink (that later became a movie cineplex and then a food court) would shut down. Nor would I have guessed, then or later, that this burgeoning charismatic Catholic community, attracting people from around the country and England and Canada, would split apart, as would other similar groups in the U.S.
A National Catholic Reporter article from 1997 highlights the breakup of the Mother of God community but also mentions similar groups that also faced scrutiny from church officials including the Lamb of God covenant community in Baltimore, People of Hope Community in Berkeley Heights, N.J., and the Word of God community in Ann Arbor, Mich.
Mother of God’s split in 1995 came about in part from its own quest for recognition from the Archdiocese of Washington, which opened the group up to careful review by church officials. The review gave a platform to Mother of God members to speak out for the first time about community practices, primarily over pastoral care and spiritual leadership, that concerned them.
In an address to community members in 1995 Washington Cardinal James Hickey noted that “in the pastoral care of this community, members were led to speak of very personal things in a manner that did not protect their right to privacy and confidentiality and which had the effect of leaving them vulnerable. Great damage has resulted from this.”
He also stressed that “every community made up of human beings—whether it is a diocese, a parish, a religious community or any other type of community—there is need for periodic change in leadership. It is not good for any community when a relatively small group is always in charge of all aspects of community life—teaching, pastoral care, policies, funds, etc.”
The close review of the Mother of God’s practices did not sit well with all its members. Some left to join a similar group, or simply no longer had anything to do with charismatic practices. Others stayed behind to reform what they felt called to in the first place.
Today the community is recognized within the Archdiocese of Washington as a “Private Association of the Faithful.” Mother of God is also a member of the Catholic Fraternity of Charismatic Covenant Communities and Fellowships that is recognized as an International Associations of the Faithful by the Vatican Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life.
But in simple terms, those who stayed in the community faced a job not unlike what urban planners are looking at today in redoing malls. They went back to the roots of what made them form what they had initially put together: a recognition of the need for a gathering place.
In an article about the rise and fall of U.S. shopping malls, the business magazine World Finance said that reimagined malls “will seek to take a bigger role in both shaping and growing communities; no longer serving as merely retail destinations, but as communities in their own right.”
Business leaders looking at dying malls with an eye to how to foster communities seems almost like a step into spiritual territory.
Forming and fostering communities is not new for the Catholic Church, with its long tradition of monasteries, religious orders, lay ministries and parishes. But it is also something that needs to be done right as the church aims to be both welcoming and thriving in the modern world.
The Vatican’s Synod on Synodality is looking into how parishes can be more than simply places for Sunday liturgies or sacraments; rather, how they can be communities of faith support and outreach. In that discussion, a look at the bygone shopping malls should stand as a warning not to let parishes be taken for granted, and later looked back on with wistful nostalgia.
