Christopher Benson and Matthew Milliner have been doing the Lord’s work over at Evangel in agitating for the recovery of a non-pragmatic understanding of church architecture.
Of course, they’re swimming up stream among us evangelicals: one whole wing of our happy movement doesn’t think we should have buildings at all.
The irony, of course, is that the same Christians who tend to be suspicious about spending money on architecture tend to also have a robust appreciation for the arts. A stereotype, yes, but part of the emerging critique of traditional evangelicalism has been an aesthetic one: The Church has neglected artists and the arts, and so they set out to recover them.
And rightly so. May their numbers increase.
But the dichotomy between architecture and the rest of the arts simply isn’t sustainable. If the arts are somehow tied to culture, then how much more architecture? As it turns out, a lot.
G.K. Chesterton:
Architecture is the most practical and dangerous of the arts. All the other arts we have to live with. They are things we have to live with, and some have even said, with regard to some kind of music and paintings, that they are things they could live without. But architecture is not a thing that we only have to live with–it is a thing we have to live in. We live with it as Jonah lived with a whale. Jonah could not see the monster and there is a great deal to be said for living in the most hideous house you can see in the landscape. That is the one place you will be unable to see it.
A beautiful building can be a sign of the wastefulness of God over and on his people, a witness that points forward to the establishment of his eschatological people. And it can be a tutor for those (the mentally disabled, particularly) unable to grasp the cognitive aspects of the faith.
In this sense, it is a sign of the decay of the culture of Christianity in America that we spend more time improving our homes than our places of worship. If we wish to make our home within the dwelling places of God, then we ought defend and promote a non-pragmatic aesthetics most especially within and among his people.
February 23rd, 2010 | 3:30 pm
For a great read on this topic, check out the new book by Denis McNamara Catholic Church Architecture and the Spirit of the Liturgy (Hillenbrand Books, 2009). It goes back to the biblical typologies and derives the authority for church building from sacramental theology, the Thomistic notion of Beauty, and the Church.
February 23rd, 2010 | 9:43 pm
As far back as my years at Bishop Foley HS in the late sixties, I became aware of the faddishness of ecclesiastical architecture primarily, but not exclusively, in the Catholic Church. At least one sanctuary looked more like a gym than a place of worship. I had grown up in a modern (1959) Episcopal church — a large but simple A-frame, cruciform building with huge windows that flooded light on the handsome, warm rich woods and colorful tiles inside. The small side chapel was equally welcoming. (Where have they gone?) I am now fortunate to attend the parish where I was confirmed last year — the National Shrine of the Little Flower in Royal Oak. The only art deco Catholic church apparently. In some ways richer than I am accustomed to; perhaps if there were an Amish-Catholic rite… I recall the words of Chesterton’s Fr. Brown when visiting an Anglican parish in the English countrside: “We have the best Church, you have the best churches.” There is something to be said for the simple wood houses of worship of the plains and backwoods of America. One of the most appealing Catholic churches I’ve come across is a one-room building of white-washed wood board shingles with simple wooden pews inside and a plain altar. Then again, the rector in the Fr. Brown story was revealed to be the murderer; maybe there’s some lesson in there.
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