As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve been really enjoying Roger Deakin’s meditation on trees ‘Wildwood‘.
In one passage on ‘The Sacred Groves of Devon’, Deakin goes in search of the ‘Green Man‘ – the woodland spirit of rebirth often seen carved into beams in old churches – in various villages. He notes the oddity of having a basically pagan deity carved into the very supporting fabric of these ancient Christian places of worship – “nowadays such an inspired conjunction would be called ‘multiculturalism’” – but then goes on to quote a great piece of Ruskin:
“Go forth again to gaze upon the old cathedral front, where you have smiled so often at the fantastic ignorance of the old sculptors: examine once more those ugly goblins, and formless monsters, and stern statties, anatomiless and rigid; but do not mock at them, for they are signs of the life and liberty of every workman who struck the stone; a freedom of thought, and rank in scale of being, such as no laws, no charters, no charities can secure; but which is must be the first aim of all Europe at this day to regain for her children.”
I had never appreciated this before. In the hundreds of tiny country churches – many built around the 16th and 17th centuries, we see local communities expressing, through their craftsmen, their faith and spirituality. Later, as more grand projects emerged, the masons were still able to throw their personal touches into their work through gargoyles and other features.
Have we lost something here? Are the warehouse churches that we throw up or rent just bland, interchangeable shells for an equally bland and interchangeable God?
Technorati: Deakin | Green Man | Megachurch | Ruskin
Comments
2 responses to “Signs of Life in the Churches”
Hi, I just got to you through vaux, through haunted geographies. I’ve spent a happy little while browsing your blog, some really brilliant thoughts. And Ruskin always gets me going, last year I wrote a piece on Ruskin, atheism and architecture.
http://phil-blogs.blogspot.com/2007/11/discuss-aims-of-john-ruskin-in-his.html
My next essays are on the role of design in effecting an ‘essence’ of sustainable housing and then a critical piece on something since 1985.. I hope a church building, I haven’t really started. I want to write on new church architecture, even emergent/ing church architecture. I can’t really find a lot written on it. Have you come across anything worthwhile on that?
“Have we lost something here? Are the warehouse churches that we throw up or rent just bland, interchangeable shells for an equally bland and interchangeable God?” I have thought this, currently at a warehouse church, and saddened by the missed opportunity that their new building project represents both environmentally and artistically. I’m torn also by their explicit arguments made for church as a shoe box as primary metaphor. Also on my blog are these questions, I’ve been going back and forth with some friends with:
Is the church building a shoe box, is it a sheepfold, is it only shelter, is there something gnostic at the end of this train of thought? Do we owe the rich architectural heritage of cathedrals from a former christendom to idolatry alone?
How deep rooted is our damaging abandonment of the arts and disregard of place, and how far reaching are the implications?
What is community? How much slower should we be moving geographically inorder to form better community, what is the role of craft in community, and what would its contemporary expression be?
If God is Green, is this a call to asceticism and does it have implications for christian expression in architecture?
Hi, I just got to you through vaux, through haunted geographies. I’ve spent a happy little while browsing your blog, some really brilliant thoughts. And Ruskin always gets me going, last year I wrote a piece on Ruskin, atheism and architecture.
http://phil-blogs.blogspot.com/2007/11/discuss-aims-of-john-ruskin-in-his.html
My next essays are on the role of design in effecting an ‘essence’ of sustainable housing and then a critical piece on something since 1985.. I hope a church building, I haven’t really started. I want to write on new church architecture, even emergent/ing church architecture. I can’t really find a lot written on it. Have you come across anything worthwhile on that?
“Have we lost something here? Are the warehouse churches that we throw up or rent just bland, interchangeable shells for an equally bland and interchangeable God?” I have thought this, currently at a warehouse church, and saddened by the missed opportunity that their new building project represents both environmentally and artistically. I’m torn also by their explicit arguments made for church as a shoe box as primary metaphor. Also on my blog are these questions, I’ve been going back and forth with some friends with:
Is the church building a shoe box, is it a sheepfold, is it only shelter, is there something gnostic at the end of this train of thought? Do we owe the rich architectural heritage of cathedrals from a former christendom to idolatry alone?
How deep rooted is our damaging abandonment of the arts and disregard of place, and how far reaching are the implications?
What is community? How much slower should we be moving geographically inorder to form better community, what is the role of craft in community, and what would its contemporary expression be?
If God is Green, is this a call to asceticism and does it have implications for christian expression in architecture?