Sermons in Stone II: Just when you thought it was safe to go back to your pew.

Dereham Road Baptist Church, Norwich: 

The subject of my monograph, "Sermons in Stone". 

 I recently published on my FB page a link to my monograph "Sermons in Stone".  As I read through it again, I realized that there was more I would have liked to have remarked on and didn't. So, something like the following will probably appear as a short postscript in a future edition. It may be a bit obscure without a knowledge of history, but it is, I believe, relevant to contemporary church life. 

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May be in reaction to the ostentatious and austere spirituality of the puritans, the English Restoration of 1660 ushered in an architectural period when the rational and secular feel of classical styles was the preferred church architecture. This persisted until the end of the Regency, by which time the gothic revival (from 1740s onward) was making itself felt among church builders. This revival was part of the romantic movement: The romantics were a reaction to the intellectualism of the enlightenment and the machine society of industrialization. This reaction involved a reaffirmation of the mysticism of the infinite and the emergence of an idealized and nostalgic conception of the mediaeval world. (Consider for example Strawberry Hill) The romantics were trying to reconnect reality with the world of human feeling and mood.

When after 1688 the English nonconformists were free to build their own worship spaces they initially opted for clean & neat classical styles to distinguish themselves from the "semi-reformed" State Church. However, an innate human diffidence toward the outcomes of the enlightenment and the industrial revolution appears to have led to a complex reactional interplay between the rational & the romantic and the mechanical & the mystical, leaving many puzzled about where life's meaning is to be found, if indeed they believed there was such a thing as meaning and purpose. Even for non-conformists gothic styles became a way of reaffirming the overarching mystery of life.

Dereham Road Baptist Church is a left over from the late gothic revival built by protestants who in their early days would probably have reacted against such romantic architecture, perceiving it as too popish. In fact the Berean tradition from which these protestants came would likely have laid claim to the rational high ground in that they saw themselves as reading scripture unsullied by Catholic prejudices & mysticism.  But in later years, especially toward the end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st, Protestant evangelicals appeared to be the very opposite; that is, none other than a last bastion of mystery and irrationality. By the late 20th century Protestant mysticism had moved on from the external expressions seen in gothic architecture like DRBC to the mystical internal experiences of the chaotic Charismatic revival.

Today we still see the existential tensions caused by the unsettled contentions between mystery & mechanism, between rational secularism & religious fideism, between the sense of the romantic & the stark functionality of a machine culture, between modernism & postmodernism and between the cosmic perspective and the intimacy of the inner life. These unresolved issues are endemic to the culture of the industrialized West. They are also relevant to church life because they can result in existential crises and sharp fundamental disagreements. See here for example.

As Sir Kenneth Clarke said:

We've a long rough voyage ahead of us, and I can't say how it will end because it isn't over yet. We're still the offspring of the romantic movement and still victims of the fallacies of hope.