{"id":2349,"date":"2011-01-03T20:41:45","date_gmt":"2011-01-04T04:41:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/?p=2349"},"modified":"2011-01-03T22:47:31","modified_gmt":"2011-01-04T06:47:31","slug":"churches-on-the-city-skyline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/2011\/01\/03\/churches-on-the-city-skyline\/","title":{"rendered":"Churches on the city skyline"},"content":{"rendered":"

Historically, much of that advantage involved the control of the built environment, of the cityscape. Under Muslim rule, churches were tightly constrained in their ability to project their presence physically into the landscape, by the public display of icons and images or statuary, by bell ringing or public processions. It was no longer possible to use the liturgy and the spectacular external decoration of church buildings to offer believers a taste of the ultimate. Even today, the lack of prominent structures or pageantry<\/strong> contributes to the Western neglect of Christian traditions in the Middle East: when painters or photographers or filmmakers wish to portray the region\u2019s cities, they focus on dominant Islamic imagery\u2014mosques and minarets. By implication, any Christian presence must be extraneous.<\/p>\n

-Philip Jenkins, The Lost History of Christianity, p.215<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is pretty obvious of course – who is in control politically will suppress the positive visibility of the minority. In the middle ages, in fact, throughout most of history, there has been no mass media, television, etc. Religious symbols and monuments were a big deal. The tolling of the church bell throughout the town was absolutely LOADED with meaning.<\/p>\n

I guess this can be seen as a defense of cathedral building<\/a>. They are very durable and proclaim, well, that at the very least Jesus is pretty important. Highly utilitarian buildings, such as has been common practice in evangelicalism in the past 50 years are cheap to build, but does any memory of them last? Do you really even notice them as a church when you drive by? When I visit any large city, my eye is always drawn to the grand church buildings. Up north of where I live, in Spokane, there is a beautiful Presbyterian church from the turn of the century. I can’t help but see JUST IT on the skyline. What does the rest of the world see when they see America? Hollywood. The skyscrapers and New York. Lots of material wealth. But they aren’t likely to see a church. Our architecture nor our artwork is really that prominent. I am all for efforts to reform some of that! On the other hand, Jenkins also mentions the downside:<\/p>\n

The strength of early and medieval Christianity was that it created a sanctified landscape in which Christian institutions were visible everywhere. The weakness of being so heavily invested in real estate was that it left an almost infinite abundance of tempting targets for plunder and destruction<\/strong>, and once these were gone, so were many of the forces that kept believers attached to the faith.<\/p>\n

-p.235<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Historically, much of that advantage involved the control of the built environment, of the cityscape. Under Muslim rule, churches were tightly constrained in their ability to project their presence physically into the landscape, by the public display of icons and images or statuary, by bell ringing or public processions. It was no longer possible to … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Churches on the city skyline”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2349"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2355,"href":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2349\/revisions\/2355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}