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| - With the biggest health crisis in the world forcing many places of worship to shut their doors, Shauna Riggs sought spiritual comfort on Sunday inside "The Smallest Church in America." The tiny chapel -- 9 by 18 feet (2.7 by 5.4 meters) and featuring just 12 seats -- is a tourist attraction along the state of Georgia's coastal scenic byway. But during the health and economic disasters brought on by the deadly coronavirus, it has become a shelter from the storm. "Literally the week I moved here, the coronavirus hit. I needed a safe space and this is it," Riggs told AFP after writing prayers on paper on the pulpit. "Since there's not a church available right now for me to actually go to, I come here," the 38-year-old higher education worker said. "I don't leave until I feel relaxed and calm. The reason I came was just to talk to God and tell him how thankful I am during these hard times, and keep my faith up." Like most businesses and organizations in the United States, churches have been forced into lockdown mode. Pastors are conducting services and Bible studies online, cutting out the essential personal interaction of religious services. The small church is pastorless, and people often step inside to snap pictures of the interior: white cinderblock walls, wooden roof beams, and a panel of stained glass featuring an image of Jesus Christ. The Ten Commandments are framed on one wall. A bulletin board featuring prayers is mounted on another, and a donation box is outside the unlocked front door. Southern live oaks, the same trees that give the closest city, Savannah, its haunted feel, stand guard outside the chapel, which opened in 1949. Georgia's Governor Brian Kemp has implemented some of the most aggressive economic revival measures of any US state, allowing churches and some businesses to re-open beginning last Friday. But the vast majority of Georgia's churches, including all of Savannah's houses of worship, remained shuttered Sunday. Pastor Bill Fowler of the Community Bible Church, near Savannah, said between 650 and 700 attend his church twice a day on most Sundays, making social distancing virtually impossible. "We're going to stream for the forseeable future, to a point where it's safe," Fowler said as he prepared for his online broadcast Sunday. "We miss each other." But the Smallest Church in America was hosting the faithful -- one or two or three at a time. By early afternoon, about two dozen visitors had dropped by, including a trio of cyclists who took their helmets off as they ducked inside. Isabella De La Houssaye, a 56-year-old with stage-four lung cancer, recently completed a 3,000-mile ride from California to raise awareness of the disease. With coronavirus hammering some communities that she and her husband and friend rode through, De La Houssaye said she hoped people could find "silver linings" from the crisis that would help them become stronger. "The prayer that I wanted to offer today was of gratitude, gratitude that we're alive, that it's a beautiful day, that we passed this remarkably sweet church surrounded by God's work in nature," she said. "It just doesn't get any better." mlm/bgs
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