by Linda A. Dove
September 26, 2021
Good morning.
Our long absence from HUU has made me realize how attached I am to our schoolhouse in its lovely gardens and location. This gets me thinking about the physical aspect of church buildings, what religious meanings they convey, and how they do it.
My mother and I used to explore old churches in England. She loved the modest ones in country villages—every one unique in style. We also visited the early-Gothic cathedrals like Lincoln, the late-Gothic like Salisbury, and the classical Romanesque like Wren’s rebuilt St. Paul’s.
In America, from the 1500s, European settlers built churches that reflected the denominations of Britain, Ireland and Europe—mostly Catholic in Maryland, Episcopalian in Virginia, Puritan in New England, as well as Methodist, Congregationalist and Universalist. Soon immigrant Quakers entered Pennsylvania and spread out, as did Mennonites, Brethren, Baptists in the mid-west and south, Scots-Irish Catholics from the northeast, and Hispanic Catholics in the south and west. All these, and more, immigrant denominations, of course, had different takes on Christian theology, its practice, and church building styles.
Of course, this is a sweeping historical simplification, but I hope it’s a bit of context for my talk. And I choose to talk only about western Christian churches, not, say, temples and mosques, because it was this Christianity that gave birth to UU-ism.
As a kid I had to go to St Michael’s, a high Episcopal church—until as a 12 year-old I rebelled. The priest seemed cold in his robes and pomp and ceremony and his insistence on my memorizing the creed and so on. And the physical building really helped put me off church altogether. It was vast, cold, dark, echoey, and the incense made me sneeze.
So my theme today is simple. I’m asking us to consider together what religious messages and spiritual values the physical body of different churches evoke in us as different individuals; and how do they do that?
The poet Philip Larkin gives us a feel of this in his long poem, “Church-Going.” Here are just the first two or so stanzas read by Grayson Sless.
“Once I am sure there’s nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence,
Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new-
Cleaned or restored? Someone would know: I don’t.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
“Here endeth” much more loudly than I’d meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.
Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; . . . .
Of course, it’s a commonplace to suggest that different architectures and interior styles offer us different experiences. But think about your own experience in different church buildings.Perhaps you’ve been inside the lofty neo-Gothic cathedral church of John the Divine in Manhatta.Perhaps you’ve stepped inside a plain, rectangular protestant church,or the ornate Romanesque cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Savannah, Georgia.Or a small church with a steeple. Or a log cabin church built by plantation slaves. And if you haven’t toured the many different churches around Harrisonburg recently, why not do so, and notice how they feel to you.
I’m going to outline four main ways in which church construction and design has expressed the central message of a particular denomination in a particular era.* In practice, these ways are not distinct but I talk about each one separately here.
One obvious way is with visual inspiration.
An example. In the early-1800s, Episcopalians revived the gothic style. Through their visual effects, neo-gothicized buildings were intended to inspire congregants with wonder and awe and, thus, deeper faith—spires/steeples, buttresses, high vaulted ceilings, sculptures of saints, angels and devils, and stained glass windows. Even small village churches were full of visual symbols. Three windows symbolized the sacraments of baptism, confirmation and holy communion, and the three principles—faith, hope and charity. The altar cross represents Christ’s incarnation becoming flesh and dying for mankind. Seven arches under the windows are the seven days of creation and Psalm 119 which sings, “Seven Days do I praise thee.” The only door to salvation is symbolized by the only door into the building. Each visual aspect inside, candles, frescoes, embroidery, even vestments, expresses specific meaning. This gothic revival was highly fought against by other Anglicans who feared a return to popery. One authority on churches, William Whyte, records how a minister was attacked for placing flowers in the shape of a cross. And another was ridiculed because, on Christmas day, white feathers were placed on the pulpit and texts on the windows were made of—tapioca.
As you know, in medieval times gothic architecture was meant to represent the holy book to illiterate people. High altars, sculptures, frescoes, paintings told biblical stories. In modern times, ornateness inspires some people but others are wary. Our own contemporary Richard Rohr has cautioned: “Don’t worship . . . the symbols, the idolatory. Instead go into the depth of the inner.”
A second way church design influences people is by encouraging listening.
[Old church buildings are sometimes described as signifying “a thousand years of prayer.” This isn’t quite accurate. From medieval times, only the priest did the praying at Sunday worship. The congregants were meant to listen. It wasn’t until recent centuries that the design of church buildings invited congregant prayer.]
An example of a listening design is in the neo-classical basilica like St Paul’s Cathedral. South Carolina has many. Typically, inside, there’s no long aisle with a barrier before the altar in the east and the congregation separated far west. Ceilings are low for better accoustics, sculptures and statues are minimized, and wall panels of texts are made re-writeable to support the theme of each sermon. Massive, elevated pulpits dominate the central space. There are even octagonal and semi-circular churches shaped for better accoustics. At one point, medieval galleries came back and were even stretched across chancels. Moveable chairs replaced pew rows and special boxes, or pew rental fees were abolished. The goal—to ensure all in the congregation, not just the elite, could hear the preaching. Someone described this movement as making churches into “machines for listening.”
So, buildings full of visual symbols and as spaces for easy listening have been two central ways in which the physical matter of churches expresses leaders’ religious priorities. Visually or auditorily the church has embodied “God’s Word.
A third way is through how the senses lead to emotional arousal.
For example, in the 1800s, the message that God is eternal was symbolized in sturdy-looking construction. For people in rapid social change who were losing their bearings in the industrial revolution, dignified, durable buildings were intended to deepen faith through a sense of its stability and security. Text for church walls was chosen to inspire. Clear windows replaced stained glass to let in “the light of heaven,” and congregants could be in direct contact with god. Someone said that it was not ornate paintings, but the faces of worshippers that reveal the invisible god.
In the early founding-father decades, churches were often the only large buildings. They were noisy places where locals met in a convivial way. St John’s Episcopal Church on Broad Street in Richmond Virginiaoften housed political and business meetings, parties, wedding feasts, dances, drinking and brawling. A reform movement arose—“Quietude” became important. Greeley, a religious writer of the time, wrote, “You should leave behind you all worldly, frivolous and carnal thoughts. [Y]ou should subdue the feelings of your soul to reverence and holy awe and let your every look and gesture be composed accordingly.” So reformists stripped down church spaces to encourage people to feel emotionally quiet and reverent. Greeley observed, “There is now a solemn and beautiful silence. It is a very solemn thing to enter God’s House.”
So, church buildings through the ages have been designed to convey religious meanings and values and to arouse emotions, mainly through our senses, mainly our eyes and ears. Stop and notice sometime how a church building evokes in you a very personal sensory response.
The fourth way is by engendering feelings of belonginess in a spiritually-akin community.
The main idea here is that congregants are not merely recipients of the Word, but active participants in worship. The one-room slave churches of the south served this purpose. They operated under the radar by pretending to be regular Congregationalist, Methodist, and Baptist. But within their four walls, the window often above eye-level and the single door shut, the black congregation felt safe to express their hearts, minds, and their African worship traditions.
Protestant churches like, say, the Low-Church Anglican or Calvinist are often boxy, plain buildings made for gathering. You sometimes see T-plan layouts that make getting together easy. Side-rooms are no longer exclusive to clergy. The pulpit is often made small and positioned off-center. Someone said, “Church comes into being when it’s full of its congregation.”
Many other physical features signal the community-focus of a church building. Here briefly are some examples established in the 1800s, many of them familiar today.
- Attracting the unchurched population, passersby, even vagrants on urban streets. Doorways wide open and, an inviting porch, the sound of hymn-singing.
- Attracting more men into church. Men’s choirs started up. Iron rods were installed for holding men’s hats. Experiments in seating men and women separately.
- Attracting newly-urban workers in their free time with Sunday evening services, and many more during the week evenings. The advent of gas lighting was an initial impetus for this. For today’s world, I would add an ample parking space, or a bus route.
- Attracting people into beautified church grounds as an outdoor sacred space.
- Tending to neglected graveyards as havens of holiness. Repairing old lychgates to welcome the living as well parking-spaces for coffins. Re-introducing once-forsaken yew trees to re-sacralize the graveyards—also to keep out sheep, goats, cows, and body-snatchers.
- Building schools near the church to pass on religious legacies. My own high school was originally a dame school built in 1701 right next the St Mary’s church graveyard.
- Holding street processions in public spaces. In 1853, an observer wrote: “Children march with flags and streamers from school to church and to the vicarage for tea. And four years on, houses along the route are bedecked with banners. The whole village has been transformed … into a sacred space .… a sacred theater.”
Church spaces and buildings, then, influence us visually, auditorily, emotionally, and in terms of encouraging community. (If we had time we could explore the sense of smell too, as with incense or mould, or of touch—hard benches or soft cushions!) But in the mid-1900s, new construction became rare as congregational numbers and resources declined after the depression and World War II. The other six stanzas of Larkin’s poem reflect this decline, which continues today. I’m sure you’ve noticed, though, that around Harrisonburg immigrant communities have recently constructed new—modest or sophisticated—churches designed for their own kinds of worship. Churches sometimes make do with inexpensive changes to buildings (as I might change my home’s paint colors) or they rent space in offices and businesses that lack religious symbolism, as the local Rise church does here. Church buildings are often now sold off. On this, I’m recalling Chris and Robin’s story about their recent Pittsburg visit and seeing the cathedral “de-sanctified” as a restaurant, the Church BrewWorks. No wonder Simon Jenkins in 2006, wrote: “To most people today, church is a puzzling place.”
In the 1960s, John Betjeman, an earlier English Poet Laureate, wrote this ditty that maybe speaks to our contemporary situation as well.
A Lincolnshire Church.
What sort of church, I wonder?
The path is a grassy mat,
And grass is drowning the headstones
Sloping this way and that.
‘Cathedral Glass’ in the windows,
A roof of unsuitable slate-
restored with a vengeance, for certain,
In eighteen-eighty-eight.
Finally, you may appreciate what Eddie Kneebone, an Aboriginal elder said: “I have found peace of heart, but not in a building. I was told, ‘Go to church. That is where you will find God. . . .’ [But] man created the buildings that he called church. God created the world. If I look for God, then it will be in the environment that he built.” This is the message too from our own local Church of the Wild.
To repeat, next time you visit a church, stop for a moment. Notice what sensory feelings, thoughts, and emotions the building—its architecture, its layout, its decoration, its furniture, its music, and its grounds or the natural world around it—arouse in you. Ask yourself what religious meanings or spiritual values the church’s physical body inspires in you. Does it in some way touch you, body and soul? Does it embody a divine presence for you, in you?
Thank you and Namaste.
References and Notes
Whyte, William. Unlocking the Church:The lost secrets of Victorian sacred space. OUP, 2017. Whyte focuses only on British churches built in the 19th. century and analyses their embodiment in terms of their sensory impacts.
Carté, Katherine. Religion and the American Revolution: An Imperial History. UP North Carolina, 2021. Carté details the disruption for the established Church of England and the British Government when the American Anglican Church was no longer part of the Empire and how the Anglican church in America adapted to the new reality and the rise of dissenting churches.
“Church Going” by Philip Larkin
Once I am sure there’s nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence,
Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new-
Cleaned or restored? Someone would know: I don’t.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
“Here endeth” much more loudly than I’d meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.
Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate, and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?
Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort or other will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,
A shape less recognizable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,
Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation – marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these – for whom was built
This special shell? For, though I’ve no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;
A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognised, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.