Why bother having churches?

Why bother having churches? It’s maybe not a question that crosses your mind very often, but when you've got two expensive listed buildings to keep up it's quite a pressing issue. And no, it’s not because no-one comes (come along Sunday morning and see) – it’s because they’re expensive to keep up, expensive to heat, and apart from Sunday mornings they’re not used very much.

But then - when people come into the New Church (the big one) the reaction tends to along the lines of 'what an amazing building'; it is quite an extraordinary space. When you spend as much time in there as I do, it’s easy to forget that most people don’t often go into places with as much self-confident Victorian grandeur as GG Scott’s mini-cathedral. (You can almost hear the brief for the job: ‘Make it imposing! Make it dramatic! Make it bigger than anyone else’s church for miles around!’)

The Old Church gets quite a different reaction – variations on 'how cute / quaint'. In particular, people love the smell, which is slightly odd as it's the smell of damp and gentle decay. I don't think anyone would be happy if their home smelled like that. But it's one way of thinking about churches, as a sort of repository of aesthetic experiences. Not one that appeals to me, but I suppose it might appeal to those who would like churches to be museums of some sort.
I don't think of myself as a curator.

So what else might churches be for? I'm sure they're not just for religious people to do religious things, because that's not what I think religion is about. If religion is worthwhile at all (which I know is a big 'if' for a lot of N16 readers), it's because it helps people (religious or not) to live fuller and more human lives. In which case churches are there, or should be there for people to do anything which will lead to that end. Churches shouldn’t just happen on Sunday mornings – they should be full all week of whatever it is the local community needs to do to enhance its life.

That’s the way churches used to be: the nave, the main bit, was the people’s place. It was only the sanctuary which was reserved for religious stuff. Then pews came along, and the whole space became pretty much unusable except for sitting and listening. Did yo know that Stoke Newington’s first school is the little room to the left of the Old Church’s main door? It was built in the 1560s, and naturally enough it was added on to the only public building in the parish, the parish church.

But if that’s what churches are for, it means an end to the romantic mustiness, I'm afraid. You just can't have 'museum' churches and places which serve the community. It's active/accessible/healthy & safe OR quaint/damp/old-fashioned. You can't do both at the same time. Which would you rather?

Revd Jonathan Clark,
St Mary's

This article was first published in N16 magazine.