Have you been to a modern church or "worship space", and have you found it at best anodyne, two dimensional and somehow cheap, like a small but Ikea clean shopping mall? Perhaps you have, even worse, have you been to a modern church and found it offensively, actively ugly?
Sure you have, we all have, though I tend to avoid those places like the plague, which is hard in this part of the world. By way of aside, if you live in N Central Texas, everything's pretty much new, and that includes churches, which are built new style, and new style's not attractive, at best it's an ersatz simulacrum of the higher aesthetic of yesteryear.
"So what went wrong," I exclaim in disgusted wonder at varnished blonde pine, faux stained glass, shiny faked up wood plastic floors, water feature font and all the rest, "Two thousand years of Christian art and architecture reduced to this." At that point, I usually walk out of the grossly ugly HVAC temple and enjoy a cigarette, only to return again in repentant humility.
Please don't laugh, it's true, I do. Still, what went wrong, and it's a serious question, because something did go wrong, got broken, and within living memory for the most part. Why, dear friends, did this happen? Big question, with more than a few answers, but let's try and narrow it down.
Why? Because society went godless, rejecting in its promethean pride the classical forms of beauty, truth and goodness, such utter bourgeois oppression, and the Church, in a fit of apostasy, followed suit. Then, after the initial revolt, ugly became the new normal and there you have it.
To put it another way, Satan hates beauty which elevates the soul to God and salvation, and encouraged trite at best, bestial at worst ugliness in our architectural norms, which the Church embraced, being foolishly married to the disbelieving spirit of the age.
Net result? Ugly churches which no one wants to go to. And guess what, they aren't, attendance's in free fall. The same rule, not that we believe in "rule" here at the Compound, applies to liturgy, the public work of the worship of God.
Make that as banal, polyester and ugly as the building you're attempting to worship in and wonder, aghast, at your lack of converts to a Faith you don't believe in anyway. I say again, what went wrong? Apostasy on a grand scale.
This is discouraging to faithful Christians and others, no one wants to live in an ugly world, life's too short for such a thing. But perhaps people are starting to wake up, to reclaim their heritage and their faith, the Faith on which the West is founded. Stats, notoriously deceptive but there nonetheless, suggest younger people are doing just that.
And well done them, they're perhaps beginning to see through the miasma of the last fifty years or more. Part of this realization will involve a thoroughgoing rejection of atheistical Socliaism, to say nothing of the Liberal project of, ahem, radical personal autonomy, and an embrace of the Faith, without which Europe and by extension us, are nothing.
That's my call and I'm sticking to it, my monkey's in the ring. Do feel free to pit your ape against mine. Guinea take it, what?
Your Best Pal,
LSP
6 comments:
I've been to some of those "churches", Parson. They're all sizzle and no steak.....
Totally agree, drjim. And "sizzle" at best.
Ahh, sizzle,, the Old Eternal " Sizzle"..
Most of the boring industrial architecture starts in the 1960's and can be linked to the removal of the mysteries and majesties of the mass. Soulless. All the interest of a warehouse. Which makes sense as the same architectural firms and building manufacturers that build these churches also build warehouses.
And a lot of the newer ones are modified steel buildings.
At one time, churches and cathedrals were places of wonder and awe, a place that physically inspires. Just look at any of the great cathedrals or even smaller chapels or churches built in the dark ages or middle ages and then carefully cleaned of centuries of smutz and dirt. Suddenly grey walls and dark windows are replaced by light stonework and bright windows.
Why don't new churches look majestic? Well, partly because majestic costs. Costs a lot. Wood carvers, stone carvers, concrete casters, metal workers, plasterers and tilers all are skilled jobs and cost plenty. It's far cheaper to have a crew of illegals do it right after they finish that ugly semi-Soviet looking apartment block monstrosity.
Why don't churches look majestic? Because of asshats like Frank Lloyd Wright, the Bauhaus and minimalist movements. Seriously, asshats all who ruined architecture for the masses. I've seen churches that have less soul and greatness than the Obama-mahal in Chicago.
Why don't churches look majestic? Because westerers have abandoned 2,000 years of ecclesiastical art. Go into any Orthodox church or a primarily central/southern American church in the USA and the art is historical looking. Statues of saints and martyrs, metalwork, gilding, tapestries and embroideries, frescos and friezes. Walk into one of those churches, built 1,500 years ago or 5 years ago, in a stone building or a strip mall, and you are transported into... a place of mysteries and majesties.
Go to any other 'western' style modern church and the atrium of most modern hospitals have more soul.
Ugly, cheap buildings. Ugly, cheap 'art.' Ugly, cheap furniture. Ugly, cheap church services.
No soul. No mysteries. No majesties. No inspiration. All which leads to soulless, mystery-less, majesty-less priests and pastors. And parishioners.
That's my rant. And you know it's true.
Which is why the Latin Mass, with all its pomp and circumstances, mysteries and majesties, and old-school altar cloths and vestments and banners and flags and accoutrements and priests are what are bringing people back to Mother Church. It sure isn't the average left-leaning politically-charged mass.
Well, original Christian’s in Rome ended up in the catacombs for mass and I understand that in England during the Protestant persecution of Catholics there were places called priest holes and mass was where ever the people could get together secretly. Our church in Glennallen Alaska wouldn’t win a beauty contest but it gives us a place for mass at least once a month and communion service on other Sundays. We may have mass at least three times a month if roads are passable starting the first Sunday of advent!
Unchurched, my views may not be pertinent. In my Sunday travels I see numerous storefront type churches with a fair amount of vehicles parked outside. Some of the 'established' churches have partially filled parking lots. Also, in this area, are numerous churches advertised as "Cowboy Churches" that seem to have full parking lots.
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