> Sure, it's sad that a village or a road got taken by water - but that would have happened eventually anyway, right?
That's not the point of the article anyways. I think we can agree that the Yup’ik people understand that their villages are going to disappear and that they will have to move. Traditionally they were nomadic people as it was, although they don't really have many choices as to where to go these days.
I don't think the ruins have any particular religious significance. It's protected because it's a landmark. Even the communists tried to stop the erosion.
Oh, and it was built like a mile from the sea originally.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruins_of_the_church_in_Trz%C4%...
> there are even people who say it's "work of god" that the wall is still standing
I find it amusing that those same people would probably not be too receptive to a comment that it was the "work of god" that caused the erosion of the cliff and consequent collapse of the other walls of the church.
In Poland there used to be a church build right by the sea on a cliff - but the sea has eroded the cliff(as seas do), and now only one wall of that church stands, on a tiny piece of land , and which is getting further eroded every single year. Yet because the church(or rather, those few bricks of the last remaining wall) have a religious significance to some people, millions of zlotys are spent each year trying to reinforce that one remaining bit of rock. Why? The cliff erosion is a completely natural process which was bound to happen. And there are even people who say it's "work of god" that the wall is still standing - while to others it's completely clear that only massive reinforcements that are built with hard cash are keeping it standing.