The ‘Save the Green Church’ ensemble continues to astound onlookers with their remarkable acumen for Public Relations and rational thought, with yet another barn-burner of a letter to the Editor of the Brooklyn Paper.
Helen Maalik introduces herself as not a “church-going person” – but someone she’s sure “many people think should be saved.”

She finds it “ironic” that she’s trying to save the Church, but the Church isn’t trying to save her.

Yet, despite her rather conflicted feelings about, well… life…. she still stands outside the Bay Ridge United Methodist Church with a sign, chanting “Save the Green Church” – stopping strangers to tell them “why we need to save this church.”

Which, if we go by Helen’s opening statement, the whole reason we evidently “need” to to save the Green Church – is for Helen Maalek.

Here’s Helen’s entire letter, confirming her reservation at the nut-house….

Save Green Church

To the editor,

I’m not a church-going person. I’m sure many people probably think I should be so I can find God and be “saved.”

Yet on Feb. 16, I went to church — the Bay Ridge United Methodist Church on Ovington and Fourth avenues in Bay Ridge. I stood outside with a sign and chanted “Save the Green Church.” I stopped strangers to tell them that we need to save this church (“More ‘Green’ to be torn down,” Feb. 9).

I found it ironic that the congregation isn’t trying to save me, yet I am trying to save it. The church has sold out to a developer, who wants to tear down a building on the National Registrar of Historic Places and put up condos.

I’ve lived in Bay Ridge for over 30 years. I walk its streets and admire its grand Victorian homes, with their turrets and columned porches. I gaze at the rows of townhouses made of brick, limestone or brownstone, with their original cornices and railings and imagine the interiors with pocket doors and moldings.

I also stumble upon construction sites of recently demolished homes and cringe at the thought of what will replace them: non-descript brick or stucco buildings with lifeless facades.

And I always think, “What a shame.”

What will we have left if the Green Church is demolished? A fleeting memory of what once stood there. But we don’t need memories; we need that church preserved as a reverence of this neighborhood’s past and as a hope for the future. Save the Green Church.

Helen Maalik, Bay Ridge