{"id":7096,"date":"2004-06-25T09:00:42","date_gmt":"2004-06-25T09:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/06\/move_over.html"},"modified":"2004-06-25T09:00:42","modified_gmt":"2004-06-25T09:00:42","slug":"move_over","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/06\/move_over.html","title":{"rendered":"Move Over"},"content":{"rendered":"

Deep subject: Chicago Tribune looks at our attachment to our spot in church<\/a><\/p>\n

Up until the mid-1900s, it was common for regular members of a congregation to pay the church to sit in a specific seat or pew, a practice called “pew rent.” Some churches listed the family’s name on the pew and also marked where the free and visitor seating was located.<\/p>\n

Today, although seating is open, many regular churchgoers still flock to the same spot every Sunday. Sociologists who study behavior say it’s not a particularly churchly phenomenon–just human nature.<\/p>\n

“It’s all about nesting and feeling comfortable in a familiar place,” said Northwestern University sociologist Bernard Beck. “It’s the same question you might have about students. What makes them sit in the front or the back of the classroom or sit where they do in a movie theater?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As a teacher, I was always amused by students’ reactions to this sort of thing. If I didn’t know a class, I’d have assigned seats for a while until I learned their names, but after that point, I usually let them sit where they wanted. Of course, their response to freedom was to attach themselves to seats for the next eight months and fight like dogs if anyone tried to take theirs.<\/p>\n

And as for Mass? We have no such attachment, although I will say, we have started trying to sit up near the front, in the vain hope that being near the action will keep Joseph more engaged. But we don’t have any particular attachment to any seat. Maybe that’s because we seem to hardly ever go to the same church for two weeks in a row. (Sshhh…don’t tell.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Deep subject: Chicago Tribune looks at our attachment to our spot in church Up until the mid-1900s, it was common for regular members of a congregation to pay the church to sit in a specific seat or pew, a practice called “pew rent.” Some churches listed the family’s name on the pew and also marked…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nMove Over - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/06\/move_over.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Move Over - 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7096"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7096\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}