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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 April 2018
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.
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.
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18. Gaze, Mission-shaped, p. 97.
19. ‘Report of Church Buildings Review Group’, p. 34.
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21. Smith, Alan, God-Shaped Mission: Theological and Practical Perspectives from the Rural Church (Norwich: Canterbury, 2008), pp. 22-24 Google Scholar.
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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.
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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.
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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.