Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-dtkg6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-09-23T08:01:20.622Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘A Serious House on Serious Earth’: Towards an Understanding of the Church of England’s Inheritance of Buildings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2018

Benjamin Carter
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The Church of England is blessed with an extraordinary inheritance of church buildings. However, this inheritance, particularly in rural contexts, is increasingly being viewed as a financial millstone and encumbrance to mission. This article takes issue with the largely ‘functional’ understanding of church buildings which is common place in the Church of England. It will argue that there needs to be a rediscovery of the symbolic and sacramental power of buildings. By reasserting the sacramental and symbolic power of church buildings we can come again to recognize how all church buildings – and not just those blessed with a great history or soaring architecture – exist in part to articulate the ongoing presence and activity of God in creation.

Keywords

church architectureChurch of EnglandDavid BrownDurhamheritagemissionRobin Gillrural churchsacraments
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Anglican Studies , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , November 2018 , pp. 128 - 146
Copyright
© The Journal of Anglican Studies Trust 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

2. William Whyte’s recently published essay ‘The Ethics of the Empty Church: Anglicanism’s Need for a Theology of Architecture’, Journal of Anglican Studies 13.2 (2015), pp. 172-88 also reflects on the challenges and opportunities presented by church buildings through a reflection on Larkin’s poem ‘Church Going’. It is a coincidence that this paper was first conceived and written as a reflection on the same poem. This coincidence is also a sign of the power and relevance of Larkin’s poem in helping the Church reflect on its inheritance of buildings. Where Whyte’s essay presents an historical response to this challenge, this essay acts as a theological reflection to this same question.

3. ‘Church Going’ in Larkin, Philip, Collected Poems (London: Faber and Faber, 2003), pp. 58-59 Google Scholar.

4. For a summary of Brown’s re-conceiving of sacramental theology see Brown, David, ‘Re-conceiving the Sacramental’ in Geoffrey Rowell and Christine Hall (eds.), The Gestures of God (London: Continuum, 2004), pp. 21-36 Google Scholar. Also see Brown, David, God and Enchantment of Place: Reclaiming Human Experience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brown, David, God and Grace of Body: Sacrament in the Ordinary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brown, David, God and Mystery in Words: Experience through Metaphor and Drama (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For overviews of Brown’s theological output, and particularly his sacramental vision, see MacSwain, Robert and Worley, Taylor (eds.), Theology, Aesthetics and Culture: Responses to the Work of David Brown (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; MacSwain, Robert ‘“A Generous God”: The Sacramental Vision of David Brown’, International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 15.2 (2015), pp. 139-150 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5. Whyte, ‘The Ethics of the Empty Church’, p. 185.

6. Bell, James, Hopkinson, Jill and Willmott, Trevor (eds.), Re-shaping Rural Ministry: A Theological and Practical Handbook (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2009), p. 14 Google Scholar; ‘Report of the Church Buildings Review Group’, available at: https://www.churchofengland.org/media/2383717/church_buildings_review_report_2015.pdf, pp. 5-6 (accessed 3 November 2016).

7. Figures taken from the Newcastle Diocesan Yearbook: 2011–2012, pp. 158-59, 235-43.

8. Jackson, Bob, Hope for the Church: Contemporary Strategies for Growth (London: Church House Publishing, 2002), p. 4 Google Scholar; Gaze, Sally, Mission-shaped and Rural: Growing Churches in the Countryside (London: Church House Publishing, 2006), pp. 91-93 Google Scholar.

9. Phil Gates, ‘Country Diary, Wednesday 10 April, 2013’, available at: www.guardian.co.uk/environment/the-northerner/2013/apr/10/kirkhaugh-south-tyne-valley-black-forest (accessed 3 November 2016).

10. Gaze, Mission-shaped, p. 93.

11. Cox, Jeffrey, The English Church in a Secular Society: Lambeth 1870–1930 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 276 Google Scholar.

12. Gill, Robin, The ‘Empty’ Church Revisited (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), pp. 27-36 Google Scholar.

13. Purves, Geoffrey (ed.), Church of Newcastle and Northumberland: A Sense of Place (Tempus: Stroud, 2006), p. 106 Google Scholar.

14. Purves, Churches of Newcastle and Northumberland, pp. 101-102.

15. Purves, Churches of Newcastle and Northumberland, p. 105.

16. Gill, Empty, pp. 36-37.

17. Gaze, Mission-shaped, pp. 94-95.

18. Gaze, Mission-shaped, p. 97.

19. ‘Report of Church Buildings Review Group’, p. 34.

20. Gaze, Mission-shaped, p. 91.

21. Smith, Alan, God-Shaped Mission: Theological and Practical Perspectives from the Rural Church (Norwich: Canterbury, 2008), pp. 22-24 Google Scholar.

22. Chambers, Paul, ‘Sacred Landscapes, Redundant Chapels and Carpet Warehouses: The Religious Heritage of South West Wales’, in Elisabeth Arweck and William Keenan (eds.), Materialising Religion: Expression, Performance and Ritual (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 21-31 (30) Google Scholar. In the context of this study it is helpful to reflect on the ongoing cost that the unsold and redundant Methodist Chapel in Alston plays in the visibility and perception of the Methodist community there.

23. Chambers, ‘Sacred Landscapes’, p. 31.

24. Morgan, David (ed.), Religion and Material Culture: The Matter of Belief (London: Routledge, 2010), p. 8 Google Scholar.

25. Whyte, ‘The Ethics of the Empty Church’, p. 179.

26. David Brown, Enchantment, p. 256.

27. The Concise Oxford Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 235.

28. Inge, John, A Christian Theology of Place (Farnham: Ashgate, 2003), p. 117 Google Scholar.

29. ‘Report of the Church Buildings Review Group’, p. 18.

30. Brown, Enchantment, p. 124. Whyte helpfully points out that the instinctive relationship of the English to the image of the Parish Church relates to their role in the established nature of the Church of England. Drawing on Wesley Carr’s distinction between ‘High’ and ‘Earthed’ establishment, Whyte reminds us of the role that the Parish Church building plays in the ‘Earthed Establishement’ which assumes the role that the Parish Church plays in providing pastoral oversight for a geographical community which complements the ‘High Establishement’ of the Church’s place in the constitutional settlement of the nation. See Whyte, ‘The Ethics of the Empty Church’ p. 174 and Wesley Carr, ‘Developing Establishement’, in Theology, 102 (1999), pp. 2-10.

31. Furbey, Robert, Dinham, Adam, Farnell, Richard, Finneron, Doreen and Wilkinson, Guy, et al., Faith as Social Capital: Connecting or Dividing? (Bristol: Policy Press, 2006), p. 24 Google Scholar.

32. Inge, Place, p. 115.

33. Inge, Place, p. 114.

34. www.spiritinstone.info (accessed 3 November 2016).

35. Sadgrove, Michael, Durham Cathedral: The Shrine of St Cuthbert (Norwich: Jarrold Publishing, 2009)Google Scholar.

36. Sheldrake, Spaces, p. 51.

37. Bede, , Ecclesiastical History of the English People (London: Penguin, 1990), p. 144 Google Scholar.

38. Brown, Enchantment, pp. 245-46.

39. www.alstonaspire.org (accessed 3 November 2016).

40. Brown, Enchantment, p. 33.

41. Brown, Enchantment, p. 28.

42. Brown, ‘Re-conceiving the Sacramental’, p. 23.

43. Brown, ‘Re-conceiving the Sacramental’, pp. 21-23.

44. Inge, Place, p. 119.

45. Brown, Enchantment, p. 24.

46. Brown, Enchantment, p. 248.

47. Trevor Hart, ‘Lectio Divina?’, in MacSwain and Worley (eds.), Theology, Aesthetics and Culture, pp. 226-40 (239).

48. David Brown, ‘Experience, Symbol, and Revelation: Continuing the Conversation’, in MacSwain and Worley (eds.), Theology, Aesthetics and Culture, pp. 265-304 (274).

49. Brown, Enchantment, p. 260.

50. http://rowanwilliams.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/2742/archbishop-in-radio-times-loves-fresh-start (accessed 3 November 2016).

51. Larkin, ‘Church Going’, p. 59.