As we near the blessed Christmastide, those twelve (yes, twelve) days of festivity and feasting, I have a few tangentially connected thoughts that seem ripe for scribbling. First, I have a new piece over at TGC Canada: Why We Need Beautiful Churches. This comes out of a growing appreciation for architecture over the last number of years. The article is my attempt to synthesize a whole bunch of different thoughts into a cohesive argument for Christians today about the value and importance of beauty. It’s an exploration of geometry, mysticism, beauty, gothic architecture, and the 20th century aesthetic slippage among most evangelical Protestants that we can and should correct. “To willingly have ugly churches, then, is a kind of inconsistency, if not an untruth.” Extra points to whoever can pick up on the writer whose prose style I (unconsciously) imitated.
I was really gratified to see that Tim Challies picked up on it and shared it on his blog. This led to an appreciative email from a reader in another country that was deeply encouraging. As a writer, it doesn’t really get better than that.
It might be just a function of my own focused attention, but it really does seem like there is more interest and discussion about beautiful old architecture than I can remember. Here is just one example:
My reaction to this is to observe that we are all starved for enduring beauty and it shows. There is also a certain nostalgia at work – longing for a simpler time. These are symptoms of the inhuman pace and shape of so much of modern life. I, like so many others, feel them deeply also.
And yet there is a consistent glimmer of hope that keeps me from any kind of despair. What is that glimmer? It is the steady flowing stream of people who, having been starved for enduring beauty, are finding the Source of beauty in Christ. We all woke up to another example this morning – the brilliant and esteemed historian Niall Ferguson announcing his conversion to Christianity.
I find it fascinating that his conversion, like so many others in recent years, was not the result of reckoning with the compelling evidence for the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus. Rather, it was essentially a negative conclusion based on negative experiences:
In a sense, what we are seeing here is what happens when one finds the cut flowers really are dead and one starts to think deeply about soils, nutrients, and what makes flowers grow in the first place. These kinds of conversions have a distinctively post-Christian shape: thoughtful people who have glimpsed the contours of what it really looks like to leave all this Christian stuff behind and realized that what they really want is back up the road a fair way.
I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit, in conjunction with a passage from a little-known C.S. Lewis essay, and I have the outline of an article shaping up. The main observation is that we are living through a moment where many people are changing their minds, and it’s fascinating to me to watch it all take place. If nothing else, it represents a significant opportunity for the church to reach such people.
Much of my writing in the last while has been in some ways critical of my own tradition. I argued for Protestant re-enchantment, reviewed positively Rod Dreher’s book on the subject, and now this piece about architecture – all of which challenge my fellow Protestant evangelicals to shore up areas of characteristic weakness. But I am conscious of the danger that comes with focusing only criticism. It’s a bit ironic because in my local church involvement my ministry takes an almost entirely positive tone: leading worship, praying for and with the saints, caring for the precious souls both old and new who find their way into our church, and seeking to be an encouragement to the vocational pastors God has given us.
Allow me to try ending on a positive note. I joined my usual podcast buddies Wyatt Graham and Andrew Noble for an episode on The Mystery of the Incarnation that you can find here for your enjoyment and edification: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPh-7ZiJO-Q
The incarnation, the Christmas miracle and mystery, is an inexhaustible wonder. Although the cares and sorrows of the world crowd in and besiege our minds and hearts, here at Christmas, with snow gently adorning the contours of our churches and homes, softening their edges, we get a glimpse of heaven. Grace and truth made flesh, God dwelling with us. May we not grow numb to this. Pray that the shock of it all would wash over you like the bracing chill of cold air into the lungs. Like the deep breath of that cold air that stings and washes over you, a wave of tingling clarity and attention.
Like the shepherds dumbstruck before angelic glory.
Phil's Scribblings 