God and Architecture
Ralph Adams Cram died on September 22, 1942. Cram was famous in his day, even making the cover of TIME magazine (1926), as one of America's most influential architects. He was a fiery Anglo-Catholic Episcopalian who helped revive English Gothic style in churches in the United States, including the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine and St. Thomas Episcopal Church, both in New York City, and Trinity Episcopal Church in Houston.
Since the time when Christians met in homes and throughout the centuries there has been a lively discussion about architecture and God. Many see European Gothic church architecture as an aid in worship, forcing our eyes heavenward and visually announcing God's majesty and beauty as light streams glorious through stained glass windows. Who is not overwhelmed to enter our National Cathedral in Washington D.C.? Others, on the other hand, have idolatrous connections to buildings, even as they see the doctrine taught there making a mockery of God. They sadly would not leave the building they helped to finance even if the apostolic and creedal faith was trampled on.
Are expensive, grand and glorious churches helpful in our worship of God who is worthy of our artistic best efforts? Or, is encountering the reality and the person of Christ in a simpler building enough - and perhaps even more important?
The first sermon in the second Book of Homilies addresses “The Right Use of the Church.” The second Book Of Homilies was initially published in 1563, but not printed together with the first Book of twelve sermons until 1623. The two collections of sermons are referred to as “The Homilies” and are considered, with the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion and the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, to be Anglican’s “formularies.”
The homily on “The Right Use” does not focus one bit on the beauty or grandeur of a building, but on “church” as the location where the people of God gathers to hear the preaching and teaching of God’s Word, and to receive the sacraments:
“The church or temple is. . . called the house and temple of the Lord, for the peculiar service there done to his majesty by his people, and for the effectuous presence of his heavenly grace, wherewith he, by his said holy Word, endueth his people so there assembled.”
“…It is likewise declared in the first epistle to the Corinthians that the church is the due place appointed for the reverent use of the sacraments.”
“…all godly and Christian men and women ought, at all times appointed, with diligence to resort unto the house of the Lord, there to serve him and to glorify him, as he is most worthy and we most bounden.”
I am convinced that a person’s ability to worship is a matter of heart, and that a good-hearted Christian can worship at the tin-roofed Cathedral in Jos, Nigeria as easily as at Westminster Abby. You take your worship with you, and I am still taken to my knees when I step into a grand cathedral when the organist is practicing for Sunday. And I still struggle when the words of joy don’t come close to matching the faces of the people. And I have the hardest time when the preacher fusses at me for not living up to the standards, rather than offering me comfort in my sinful distress.
(Parenthetically, I had the privilege of being rector of two of the most visually stunning churches in country, for ten years each. They were absolutely breathtakingly beautiful; they still are! Each won national awards for their design and beauty. When I retired from the Episcopal Church and later began with a handful of friends an ACNA church, we rented a hall that had chairs not pews, industrial carpet instead of hardwood floors, and not a single Tiffany stained glass window or pipe organ in the whole place. We learned together that church isn’t the place where you worship, but the God whom you encounter. We learned together that the Most Holy does not live in houses made with hands (Acts 7:48) but in the people gathered in worship (1 Cor 3:16-17). My bet is that when God welcomes the people of Trinity Episcopal Church into heaven, he will be far more excited that they started the Lord of the Streets Mission in 1990 to reach the homeless in Houston with the gospel, than the building they built - that is either a tribute to God or to themselves. God knows.)