Editorial

Parishioners are often proud of their
churches but (especially in the Church
of England) they also experience the
great burden of looking after national
monuments. As a worshipping commu-
nity they may feel that some aspect of
the building is inappropriate and with
such a large proportion of the annual
budget allocated to fabric they consider
the priorities, in terms of the Church's
mission, to be confused. Some small
congregations are collapsing under the
weight of the fabric, and large congre-
gations can bealienated from their
building if they have been refused
permission to grow or to re-arrange
things.
The building is an existential trace of
the worshipping community. The
church has grown with them, has been
shaped by them, been overlaid with
their memorials and with their sym-
bols. The church has been shaped by
the community, its theology, ecclesitol-
ogy and its liturgy, and in turn it shapes
the succeeding generations of the
community and its individual mem-
bers. lt is not just the archaeologist or
architectural historian who can read the
history of the church community, how
ithas been shaped, and whatit thinks of
itself, in the church fabric. We all read
the fabric all the time; a glimpse ofa
distant high altar through a screen says
something about local theology, as
does a well-ordered nave altar.
Our church is a parable of commu-
nity. lt stands for the community as a
sign of its presence, and as a sign of
how it is present. The world itreveals is
a sacramental world. There we find a
point of crossing-over between this
world and the next; the kingdom of
God breaks into this world and there we
leam to detect that in-breaking in so
many comers of life. As Eliot wrote in
‘Little Gidding':
.. .You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform
curiosity .
Or carry report. You are here to
kneel
Where prayer has been valid. . .
And what the dead had no speech
Taking Risks
for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the
communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire
beyond the language of the living.
Here, the intersection of the timeless
moment
Is England and nowhere. Never and
always.
To be alienated from the building is,
then, a very serious matter for a congre-
gation, both pastorally and spiritually.
It means a loss of rootedncss, a loss of
significance. That can be re-built in
other ways, but we can only re-build on
the basis of what we have been and
what we are. What would it mean for a
worshipping community to move out
ofa building which it had consecrated
and in which thirty generations of that
community had worshipped for a thou-
sand years? Can such a building truly
be deconsecrated? Ruskin reminds us
that
The greatest glory ofa building is
not in its stones, nor in its gold. Its
glory is in its Age, and in that deep-
sense of voicefulness, of stern
watching, ofmysterious sympathy. . .
which wefeel in walls that have long
been washed by the passing waves of
humanity.
[The Seven Lamps of
Architecture, Aphorism 30]
The conservation of the fabric is the
maintenance of the memory of the
community. Restoration is notjust
about bricks and mortar but about the
restoration of its story to the commu-
nity, the restoration of memory to the
community; and a community that has
irrevocably lost its memory and has
been alienated from its story, will soon
cease to be.
But conservation, or even such resto-
ration as this, is not enough. We need a
living past. A heritage is of no use to us
if it does not feed our present life and
our future. We must grow and change,
and our churches must continue to
"reflect that growth and change. There is
a remarkable lack of perspective in
those who see themselves as the end of
history and not within it. This genera-
l
I
tion has its positive contribution to
make, not just in terms of the preserva-
tion of mediaeval, Georgian, or
Victorian monuments.
What is so special about the English
parish church is the wonderful layering
of significance, the building as a pal-
impsest of generations. We are in
danger of freezing that process, of
killing what we value most by giving
ourselves no part in it. In a way we
cannot help but say something about
our generation in the way we treat our
buildings. Will we bejudged to be
invisible or tawdry, positively histori-
cist or regressive?
In architecture, so often what we
value most in the contribution ofour
predecessors to this process is the
strong statement that arises out ofdeep
conviction - even if in retrospect it
appears to have been poorly integrated.
Think of the Gothic of Hawlernoor, ,
Essex, Pugin and Scott, or the vagaries l
of Butterfielid. It is not that their work '
or the theory upon which it was based
was correct that is of such value to our
heritage; it is their infusion of li f e into
their work. Their coherence of vision
allows us to value them for what they
were.
Our community, our theology, and
our ecclesiology are not incoherent.
They are in transition and are being re- ‘
formed. Our architecture must reflect
that. Rather than accepting a fearful
conservatism we, like the generations
that went before, must be brave enough
to make mistakes, even monumental
ones. We must not act irresponsibly,
but in good faith, faith in our Church.
But faith, even good faith, always car-
ries an element of risk. To reap the
benefits of faith the only responsible
course of action is to accept a degree of
risk. It is best that it be a calculated risk,
but it will be a risk nonetheless if we
are to act in faith and for the sake of the
faith.
ALLAN DOIG
2
Church Building Summer 1990