 BRISTOL, England—In front of the altar at St. Paul's Church, two young acrobats balance upside down with their toes pointed heavenward. Unicycles lean against 200-year-old pews and trapezes hang from 12-metre-high scaffolding alongside stained-glass images of Moses, David and Elijah. "I love to see the church used like this," says the Rev. David Self, the local Church of England vicar, watching 20 teenagers training to become circus performers. "If we worship and celebrate a God who is creative, for me this is part of His work."
| "Besides, I got nuttin' else to do. Bein' a vicar ain't what it used to be, and it never was that strenuous..." |
St. Paul's, a towering 18th-century landmark in this industrial city 160 kilometres west of London, is an emblem of a movement to save this nation's majestic but increasingly empty churches by converting them to inventive new uses. Hundreds of historic houses of worship are being turned into apartments, offices, pubs, spas, shops and, in the case of St. Paul's, an academy to teach circus and theatre skills to underprivileged youths. "These churches are part of the nation's identity," says Paul Lewis, a Church of England official who oversees conversions of church buildings. "Sometimes the economic reality is that churches have to be closed. At the end of the day, it's better to have the buildings being used."
| "I mean, we don't have any use for them anymore. Back in the old days, when we used to worship God, then we had some use for them..." |
The Church of England, founded by King Henry VIII in 1534, is the nation's largest. But it has closed about 1,700 churches since 1970, as attendance has declined and centuries-old buildings have become too costly to maintain. Fewer than 7 per cent of Britons now attend church regularly, according to Christian Research, a private group that studies church issues. Church of England officials say that while the church has 24 million baptized members in England, only about 1 million of them are in the pews on a typical Sunday.
| ... and most of them aren't particularly interested. |
Many of the buildings being converted are cavernous structures erected in the 18th and 19th centuries, with imposing spires rising in crowded city centres. But residents have migrated to the suburbs, especially since World War II, and left behind aging buildings that are extremely expensive to heat and maintain. The Church of England still operates more than 16,000 churches, and about 500 new ones have been built in the past 35 years, many in suburban areas. But, Lewis said, the church continues to shut about 30 buildings a year. "There is a great sadness surrounding the closure of these historic buildings," said Steve Bruce, a professor of sociology at the University of Aberdeen. "But they have to be shut down and sold off. There is absolutely no reason to suppose that there is going to be a great turnaround in church attendance."
More at the link, of course...
I love the old churches of Europe. I've been to Notre Dame, and I've been to Aachen and to Rheims, among others, purely to admire the architecture. It's sad to realize that they're going to become just buildings, and that eventually they'll be torn down because they're too expensive to keep up. But I'm not surprised. When you stand for nothing, where's the surprise when nobody wants to join you? If there's no good, no evil, no heaven, no hell, no sin, no redemption, and God is a vague idea rather than a literal presence, then the buildings are white elephants, suitable for training acrobats and jugglers and clowns.
If the Church of England and its intellectual clones spent a bit more time dwelling on the concepts of good and evil, and maybe took a stand on the side of good, people might start coming back, rather than wandering off to either join other churches or to sit at home and try and figure things out for themselves. Their children might even be raised with those very concepts of good and evil and be steered toward the good.
What need has a church to be "inclusive"? It doesn't mean welcoming all who accept the theology, regardless of social status, color, or what have you. The term's been redefined so that everybody can be a part of the "congregation," whether they believe or not. But that's not really a congregation. It's just a crowd, and a dwindling crowd at that. |
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