Vonnegut blog

St. Marcus was a decrepit old church. The walls were all scoured clean so they shone bright in the sun, even if the paint was chipping off here and there. Every here or there a shingle had given up the will to go on and cascaded to the rocky ground below. But it was still standing. The small but devoted congregation filed in every Sunday and bowed their heads than filtered out. And so it was and so it continued until the day Francis Horten showed up.
When ever things changed in their town the pre-determined reaction of the "old guard" was the same high-nosed pomposity. This was particularly true where their beloved old church was concerned. They would have no mucking about with the articles of faith and most certainly no alteration of their sacraments. And it was that ridged refusal to compromise that their parents had taught them and that they would pass on to their children, or at least they would if they hadn’t all run off once they could walk. Horten had dealt with such hard-nosed conservatism before so he knew just what to do. And that was why on his first night in town he set that church on fire.