September 27, 2009


  • This morning I attended a service at the Chiesa Valdese di Brescia. This is the only Protestant church in Brescia – officially a union of Waldensian and Methodist churches – the translation they give on the outside is United Reformed.

    Having read the website I knew I was expecting a cultural mix, and probably quite a lot of English. I was not wrong.  When I arrived, scores of Africans in their wonderful Sunday clothes waited outside the church. I went in, having chatted to one of them, and picked a seat near the back, and had a look at the service sheet and hymn book I found nearby, inside which there was an interesting introduction to Protestantism in Italy. The church started filling up, probably 80% Africans, 18% Italians and 2% other... the other being myself, a Dutch family of 5 who sat in front of me and were very chatty and helpful (showing me how the service worked with the bilingual hymn book etc), and an Irish lady who has obviously been living in Italy a long time as when she spoke English she sounded Italian.  By the time the service started, there wasn’t an empty seat in the house, and as people kept on piling in late, there was soon no standing room either... they need a bigger church!

    Now, most of the service was fairly standard stuff in terms of content, but everything was conducted bilingually, including the singing. The hymns in the bilingual book were standard well known Protestant ones but half the church was singing in English and half in Italian, which made for a rather confusing sound... the readings were read in each language, the pastor did her sermon in Italian and then English after... it was interesting, but also rather confusing.
    Apart from one point in the service, it wasn’t as lively as I was expecting it might be either. All very sedate in fact... the one point was when they took the collection. We had been given a Ghanaian song on a sheet of paper, with an Italian translation. We remained seated while they took the collection, and so the first verse was sung sitting down and very sedately... however as soon as the collection was finished, everybody (well, the 80%!) leapt to their feet and started clapping and singing it very livelily which was great! From the comments made by the pastor afterwards, this obviously wasn’t a weekly occurrence.

    Afterwards the Irish lady asked me how I had found it, and she commented that it’s “different” and she often doesn’t really like it, but that it’s “that or catholic”. True... however, I think next week I will give one of the catholic churches a go...I’ve found one that looks very inclusive and although obviously it excludes me from being able to take communion etc, the Waldensians only communicate once a month anyway, and in fact, from my experiences of going to mass in Trento, Catholicism is much closer to my usual anyway (apart from the lack of hymns...). Also, the bilingual thing didn’t really do it for me... I’m looking for more integration into Italian society really.