Frenchman's Bend Church in "Shingles for the Lord" (Location)

The narrator of the story calls it simply "the church," without telling us its name. Nor does he specify the form of Protestantism that Rev. Whitfield preaches, though the way the story calls attention to the "long nightshirt he would wear to baptize in" suggests he is a Baptist (40). The narrator lists Armstids, Tulls, Bookwrights, Quicks, Snopeses and Griers as the families that "belonged to that church and used it to be born and marry and die from" (41). The structure itself is one-room and "old," built from wood "long dried out," and "full of old colored-picture charts that Whitfield had accumulated for more than fifty years" (40). It burns quickly. But there is also, the narrator decides, something about the church and the preacher and the small community's commitment to it that can be described with words like "indestructibility, endurability" (42).