A Theology of Church Architecture
Cathedral in Antigua, Guatemala (from a photograph I took in 2013)
When it came to the relative adornment of church buildings, the Puritans of sixteenth-century England, registered a double charge against their Anglican counterparts: that the practices of the Elizabethan church revealed a prideful heart and that God took no pleasure in “chargeable pomp.”
God instead was most acceptably worshiped in humble structures—in “the houses of poor men.” The grounds for this claim, they believed, were as manifestly sure as the “nakedness of Jesus” and the “simplicity of his Gospel.”
Against this, Richard Hooker, a spokesman for the Anglican party of the time, argued that sumptuous architecture and visual fecundity gave an expression of humanity’s “cheerful affection” for God and bore witness to creation’s natural and aesthetic riches.
Just as Bezalel was commended for building a sanctuary for God that was as “beautiful, gorgeous and rich as art could make them,” so the church should build its own sanctuaries that gave sensible witness to the majesty of God.
The external bore witness to the internal and the visible resembled the invisible which in heaven was fully beautified.
(A sweet little church in a sweet little town in northern California that I visited in the summer of 2021)
For most Christians today, no matter their ecclesial tradition, there is little doubt about the power of the architectural arts. Their capacity to serve or to hinder the corporate worship of the church is clear to all—to iconodules as much as to iconoclasts.
A week from today, April 21, I’ll be giving a public talk on theology and church architecture. In it I’ll ask what story a church building tells about its idea of God, its relation to its own tradition, and to the geographic and cultural place which it occupies.
And I’ll ask what each instance of church architecture opens up and closes down for the formation of our humanity as well as our life before God and before a watching world.
It will take place at All Saints Presbyterian Church in Austin and will be followed by a panel conversation with the pastor of the church, Tim Frickenschmidt, and two professional architects, Arthur Andersson of Andersson-Wise Architects in Austin and Emily Yan of Perkins & Will in Dallas.
The event will not be livestreamed but tickets do include the keynote, dinner, and two free adult beverages. Childcare is also available upon request. You can register for the event here. It should be lots of fun!
Interior of King’s College Chapel in Cambridge, England (which, yes, is gorgeous)
