(no subject)

[tree_and_leaf]

Yesterday I was at the Scott-Holland lectures, which this year were given by Neil MacGregor, the director of the British Museum on 'the constraints and opportunities of a visual tradition' - or rather, what the making of images does to Christianity, and what the images we make, inherit and modify say, particularly to people outside the church. The Scott-Holland for whom the lectures was named was Henry Scott-Holland,† sometime Dean of St Paul's, high-churchman and one of the founders of the Christian Socialist Union - he was one of the second wave of churchmen of the Oxford Movement, whose strongly incarnational understanding of God as intimately involved in the world and concerned for the poor led them to the East End, and to a passionate interest in social justice (even to the insistence that it is as important to pay a fair price for goods as it is to pray and receive the sacraments). This, incidentally, is why so many Anglo-Catholic churches are in poor places - or what were poor places at the turn of last century - and also why I get irritated when people assume that all 'Spikes' are only interested in ceremonial and the cricket pages of the Daily Telegraph.


It might sound as if that hasn't got much to do with art, but MacGregor - who is an excellent, if unassuming, speaker, and apparently a very devout, intelligent and unpretentious Christian - brought it all together in a very satisfying and though-provoking way. The justification for Christian representational art in the first place is incarnational - God, as uncreated spirit, cannot be imaged, but you can make pictures of Christ, who is both human and God; furthermore, justifications for devotional art often appeal to the need to reach out to the poor and ignorant. But art is made because rich and powerful pay for it, and that can affect what gets shown and how it's shown, whether it's the polite nativities attended by richly dressed kings, with Mary looking as much a well-dressed aristo as the Magi, or the interesting fact that there are a vanishingly small number of pictures that show the young Christ telling his parents off for not knowing he'd be in 'his Father's house', despite the popularity of images of the wunderkind teaching in the Temple, or of happy nuclear Holy Families, with a gentle Jesus, meek, mild and submissive to authority. It ought to be bourne in mind that Mary is also almost always also a symbol of the church, so that the two pictures MacGregor showed which do show conflict between Christ and Mary can be seen as a rebuke to an institutional church which likes to think that it's infallible, but is actually quite capable of being blind to God's purposes (even when it starts out with the best of intentions, as it generally does). This certainly seems to be what's going on in Simone Martini's Christ Discovered in the Temple, which has the most fantastic body language, with Mary an exasperated mother, Christ standing with folded arms in the immemorial pose of the stroppy pre-teen who doesn't understand why adults are so stupid, and poor Joseph stuck in the middle, apparently saying something along the lines of "now, let's everyone calm down..." (or maybe it's "Don't speak to your mother like that!")

So art is ambivalent - and limited in other ways, as it's quite hard to paint parables - but it can speak to us in quite profound ways, inviting us to stillness and contemplation. It's also one of the places where religious discourse is still evident in a largely secularised world, whether in terms of art galleries and churches. But odd things can happen with churches - whether they're institutionalising powerful images hat were intended to speak directly to everyone, such as the Holman Hunt Light(s) of the World, both of which have ended up in places where you have to pay admission (unless you have a Bod card, for the Keble one) - and embarrassingly, both those places are churches. It was here that we got to the controversial bit, in which MacGregor attacked - politely and with the due humility of someone who knows he gets a government grant that, say, St Paul's and Westminster Abbey don't get - the policy of charging admission to churches. Because St Paul's and the Abbey are the most obvious symbols of Christianity in the capital, and do have things to say to individuals and society - but it costs £10 to visit St Paul's (I think Westminster Abbey is even dearer). And what that says - regardless of the intentions of the Dean and Chapter, which is a pragmatic decision designed to safeguard the building they're responsible enough - is that the church, and by extension God, is available primarily to the rich; those who are too poor to afford to pay the charge don't matter. Which is not something Christianity can teach, even inadvertently, without totally betraying all we know of God and try to live by. MacGregor asked whether, if here really is a choice between cathedrals that charge, and no cathedrals at all, it might not be better to have none.

... and I think he might actually be right, if that is the choice (though it surely can't be). If a church is a church, then it's a house of prayer for all the nations, and it is, frankly, obscene that they should charge enough money to feed a family for access to a building which belongs in one sense to the God who had nowhere to lay his head, and in another to the whole community. It's not a question of whether we can't afford not to charge, it's a question of whether we can afford to - and I think we can't; the price is too high. I can't help feeling that if Jesus should suddenly return and visit St Paul's, there would indeed be barriers pulled down and cash registers turned over. There's a part of me that would like to do so myself, though I won't, because I am a coward. But if the cathedrals really are only sustainable as museums (though Westminster Cathedral (RC) and St Giles Edinburgh (Church of Scotland) both seem to manage as freely-accessible churches), then it would be better if they were museums, instead of pretending to be the house of God.

Ahem. Here endeth the sermon, but I do feel very strongly on the issue.

† He's best known these days for that thing that often gets read at funerals, 'Death is nothing at all', but this would annoy him, as the passage has been violently wrenched out of context; Holland was actually arguing that while we'd like to think of death as 'nothing', it isn't, it's violent and disruptive and hurts like hell for those who are left behind, and Christian faith and hope only mean anything if they can take the suffering seriously. He's much better remembered by that magnificent hymn of Christian challenge to an unjust and sinful world, Judge Eternal, throned in splendor - ignore the awful midi file, the correct tune is Rhuddlan.



In conclusion: I seem to have turned into a Neil MacGregor fangirl (though I get the impression that he wouldn't know what to do with one), and I really wish I had seen the exhibition Seeing Salvation in 2000; I wonder if you can still get the catalogue?

Comments

[fpb.livejournal.com]

You are assuming that the establishment of the Church of England (I am not speaking about the few unfortunate believers who, for one reason or another, can still be found in it) has anything to do with the Christian faith. To the contrary: it exists to neutralize, neuter and eventually demolish it. And it has been astonishingly successful in doing so: according to a recent report, eleven per cent of children in English schools believe that Christmas celebrates the birthday of Santa Claus. Ignorance about Christianity is so total that, to most people baptized in the main churches, church buildings might as well be temples. They only see the inside of them when they are married or buried, if then.

[tree_and_leaf]

I do not see myself as an 'unfortunate' Anglican - I could be something else, after all. The C of E has many faults - and things like admissions charges to churches are an obscenity - but even its worst decisions have been made, by and large, by decent people who thought they were doing the best thing in a difficult situation. All the Anglican bishops I have come across have struck me as sincere and faithful people, even when I disagree with them on certain matters.

The problem is, I think, that all institutional churches - and given that humans are social animals, you can't actually do without some form of institution - carry the seeds of their own corruption within them, and the cause of it, apart from the simple sins like greed and pride - generally seem to come down, fundamentally, to a lack of faith. It's disturbingly easy to fall into a mindset that comes close to wanting to protect God from the consequences of trying to live out the Gospel - which is something of an absurdity, apart from anything else. But the answer isn't to walk away; it's more along the lines of "wrestle, fight and pray" (not necessarily in that order).

But nonetheless - even just looking at bishops over the last century, an institution which has produced people like William Temple, Michael Ramsey and David Sheppard can't be all bad, and that's without even considering what's actually more important: the numbers of ordinary, unspectacular Anglicans who have lived out their faith in these islands.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

A man I know once found himself on some sort of board to do with education, together with about six English Anglican bishops. After about half an hour, it dawned on him that not a single one of these mitred gentlemen spoke as if they believed a word of the Gospels or of the creeds. He might as well have been discussing with half a dozen secular social workers. We know that the Archbishop of Canterbury has a strong personal faith and is capable of quite exceptional performances in the pulpit - one of which I have quoted whole in my blog: http://fpb.livejournal.com/288361.html - but his fantastic inefficacy, and indeed surrender, as a Christian leader, is symptomatic of what he feels he can achieve. Bishops such as the past incumbent of Durham and the present one of Southwark are nothing more than embarrasments, but what is most embarrassing is that they plainly represnt in public what many or most of their fellows prudently keep private. As for earnest decency, it is a virtue for schoolmistresses and social workers; bishops should be leaders and fearless fighters. Otherwise their apolostic succession is from Judas.

[schreibergasse.livejournal.com]

Also: please note that the phenomena you describe (utter cluelessness about Christian doctrine, only seeing the inside of churches when they are married or buried) are also fairly widespread among churches that AREN'T established, at least in North America. It applies to most mainly Protestants here, and a significant portion of Catholics. While one may debate the reasons why, it seems to be a factor anywhere where church membership is not a (social OR political) necessity, or where the majority of the membership doesn't consist of converts.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Rather, it is where people are not distracted by a stream of communications that can dominate every free moment of daily life, and that takes attention away from every serious issue. However, all the bad sides of modernity are heightened and concentrated in the Anglican body, which was created and has long been kept into being merely in order to go forth and tell the world that it is quite all right in everything he does - from a vicious murdering king wanting to get rid of his kindly and beloved wife for the sake of a frippet half his age, to a whole nation not wanting to be restrained by any scruples in anything it does. Anglicanism is the church of the English nation, and it faithfully serves its master.