I was very pleased to be asked to contribute to this book which has just been published by Palgrave Macmillan:
Antitrinitarianism and Unitarianism in the Early Modern World
The publishers describe the volume in these terms:
This collection offers an innovative and fresh interpretation of Antitrinitarian and rational dissent in the early modern world. The central themes focus on the fierce debates surrounding Antitrinitarianism and Unitarianism that emerged from the Reformation and the lived cultures of these dissenting movements. The chapters take an interdisciplinary approach addressing ideas in context, their reception and appropriation, and the diverse and often conflicting visions of Christianity. Drawing on previously unused sources, many from Eastern Europe and often in inaccessible languages, this book challenges our understanding of dissent as marginal and eccentric and places it at the center of contesting convictions about the nature of religious reform.
The contents are as follows:
Introduction
The Porous Boundaries of Dissent
Bruce Gordon
Antitrinitarianism and Its Influence in Italy and Poland
Italian Antitrinitarianism and the Legitimacy of Dissent
Odile Panetta
Scripture, Piety, and Christian Community in the Thought of the Polish Brethren
Sarah Mortimer
Religiosity in the Ethos of Polish Brethren in Light of Funeral and Wedding Speeches from the Seventeenth Century
Maria Barłowska
True Heirs of Jan Łaski: Polish Brethren Church Discipline in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and During Their Exile in Transylvania
Kazimierz Bem
Transylvanian Unitarianism
The Late Confessionalization of the Transylvanian Unitarian Church and the Polish Brethren
Gizella Keserű
Introduction to the Transylvanian Unitarian Disciplina Ecclesiastica
Lehel Molnár
De Disciplina Ecclesiastica: On Ecclesiastical Discipline (1626)
Alexander Batson
The Term, Development, Purpose, and Practice of Church or Canonical Visitation: Unitarians in Háromszék in the Seventeenth Century Between Conventional Rhetoric and Reality
Lehel Molnár
Some Aspects of the Hungarian Unitarian Liturgy in the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries
Sándor Kovács
Engagement and Divorce Cases Before the Unitarian Consistory in Seventeenth-Century Transylvania. Frameworks in Church Law and the Doctrine of Marriage
David Szigeti Molnar
England, Ireland, and New England
The Historical Critique of Heresiology in the Seventeenth Century and the Origins of John Milton’s Arianism
R. Bradley Holden, Samuel J. Loncar
Authority, Reason, and Anti-trinitarianism: John Abernethy and the Competing Pressures Within Irish Presbyterianism in the Early Eighteenth Century
A. D. G. Steers
The 1662 Book of Common Prayer and Its Adaptation in Eighteenth-Century Rational Dissent
Bryan Spinks
New England Congregationalists and Unitarianism in Late Eighteenth Century/Early Nineteenth Century
Peter Field
The editors are:
Kazimierz Bem, Pastor of First Church in Marlborough (UCC), USA and a senior lecturer in Church History at the Evangelical School of Theology in Wrocław, Poland.
Bruce Gordon, Titus Street Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Yale Divinity School, USA.
Hardcover ISBN978-3-031-69657-2
Softcover ISBN978-3-031-69660-2
eBook ISBN978-3-031-69658-9
You can find out more about this book via this link.
Ephemera is the term given for items that weren’t usually expected to last. Usually printed items, they had only a limited shelf-life and were generally expected to be thrown away when they had been used. Inevitably such things tend to become interesting to collectors because they often illuminate some aspect of social history that might otherwise be lost. Our new Very Rev William McMillan Library is rich in ephemera and this latest video explores two items held by the Library:
Click above to see Episode 3 of the explorations of Dunmurry NSP Library
In 1924 and 1925 the congregation of York Street Church, Belfast, under the leadership of Rev Dr A.L. Agnew, produced a calendar to sell to the denomination. Over the two years they included a picture of all the churches in the denomination in Ireland and they make for interesting documents. Many of the pictures date from a bit before the mid-1920s but it makes for an interesting collection of early twentieth-century photographs. Some images are quite well-known and have often been published. Some are quite rare like this picture of Ballymoney:
There’s also a reminder of an attempt at outreach in Bangor which lasted for a few years, and seemed to be successful for these years at least:
But altogether they are interesting documents. They must have captured a lot of interest at the time but at the end of the year what do you do with an old calendar but throw it away? Which is why so few have survived. You can find out all about it by watching the video.
George Cross was born in Toxteth, Liverpool and lived all his life there apart from the war years. As a young man he took part in the D-Day Landings on 6 June 1944, not returning there until 2009 at the age of 100.
As a young man George attended Hyslop Street Mission, later moving to Sefton Park Presbyterian Church where he was an elder and lay preacher. George developed lots of interests and became a published author, writing about Liverpool history, and late in life emerged as an accomplished artist with public exhibitions and a book of his paintings which commemorated Liverpool buildings, many of them long demolished, including Sefton Park Church (at the top of the page).
In this video we tell some of the story of his life, particularly in relation to the D-Day Landings in which he participated. He has the distinction of having a building named after him in Toxteth and is remembered by a great many people for the warmth of his character and his kindness.
Click on the video to see George’s story
‘seeing is believing: the Liverpool paintings of George Cross’
The video includes some film of George’s return to Normandy in 2009 as well as film of him at one of his exhibitions.
The latest issue of Faith and Freedom is now available. In this issue we are pleased to publish the entire transcript of the most recent Reckoning International Unitarian and Universalist Histories Project webinar. Entitled Uncovering the Hidden Power of Women in Unitarian and Universalist History the discussion comprises an international panel with an introduction by Lehel Molnár, Unitarian archivist at Koloszvár, Transylvania, and with Rosemary Bray McNatt, President of the Starr King School for Ministry, Berkeley, California, as the moderator and concluding responder. The main papers are ‘The Story of Pharienbon Rani and Unitarianism in the Khasi Hills, India’ by Alisha Rani, professor of sociology at Shillong, India, and ‘Profiling Black Women’s Ministries in Unitarian Universalism’ by Qiyamah A. Rahman, a UU minister and activist in the United States. Responses are given by Olga Flores (Bolivia), Ann Peart (UK), and Mária Pap (UK and Transylvania), with closing remarks by Mark W. Harris, one of the main planners for the Reckoning Histories Project. The journal also includes some photographs (including the cover – see above and top) by John Hewerdine taken at the Annie Margaret Barr Memorial Orphanage in Meghalaya which help illustrate the theme of both Alisha Rani’s paper and a review by Derek McAuley also found in this issue.
Margaret Barr in her office in the Khasi Hills (Photo: John Hewerdine)
Other papers include Wayne Facer’s Mr Jellie’s Romance, an account of the pioneering days of Unitarianism in New Zealand and how amidst his work to establish the cause he fell in love with and eventually married Ella Macky. She was a member of an active Unitarian family but her own commitments frequently took her to the other side of the world to attend University and to participate in the International Council of Unitarian and Other Liberal Religious Thinkers and Workers in Amsterdam in 1903, while Jellie carried out his work establishing the congregation in Auckland and supporting Unitarians elsewhere in New Zealand.
Barrie Needham examines the life and poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Catholic convert and Jesuit priest, whose poetry remained unpublished in his own lifetime but which has gained a great following from the early twentieth century onwards. A Victorian poet but one whose style is as bold and striking as anything written at any point since. Barrie Needham shows how Hopkins wrestled with his poetry to express his faith in God and his understanding of God in nature, and shows the philosophical understanding that underscored his writing. If you have ever read any Hopkins or heard his poems being read you will find this article immensely helpful.
In addition we have four excellent reviews of notable recent books.
Avi Shlaim, aged two, with his parents and sister in Baghdad, 1947. From the cover of his book.
Graham Murphy reviews Avi Shlaim, Three Worlds, Memoirs of an Arab-Jew, (Oneworld Publications, 2023). The book of the year for both the Times Literary Supplement and the New Statesman, Avi Shlaim tells his own story as someone who was born into the prosperous and significant Jewish community of Iraq following the Second World War and who was forced, with most of the Jewish population, to emigrate to Israel in 1950. At the age of 15 his life changed when he managed to come to the UK, ending up at Cambridge and ultimately as Professor of International Relations at St Antony’s College, Oxford. As a young man he served in the Israel Defense Force but is not afraid to criticise Israel or Zionism. His most recent research has gone back to Iraq and his own origins as part of ‘a Diaspora that had been the living embodiment of Muslim-Jewish co-existence [which] was no more’. In Shlaim’s view ‘As Israel expanded, the Palestinians, Arab natives of historic Palestine, not the Germans or the Russians, would take the burden of punishment for the European pogroms of modern history and the Final Solution.’ His reflections on his Jewish past in Iraq and on Arab-Israeli relations ever since are well worth reading, especially at the present time.
Andrew Linzey and Clair Linzey (eds.), Animal Theologians (Oxford Academic, Oxford University Press, 2023) is reviewed by Feargus O’Connor who takes us through the theological contributions to the consideration of animal rights, vivisection and animal cruelty. A number of the subjects of the book are Unitarians – most notably Frances Power Cobbe and Charles Hartshorne – and many would find agreement with Gandhi who Feargus quotes:
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way animals are treated. Vivisection is the blackest of all the black crimes that man is at present committing against God and His fair creation. It ill becomes us to invoke in our daily prayers the blessings of God, the Compassionate, if we in turn will not practise elementary compassion towards our fellow creatures.
Professor David Williams reviews Mary-Jane Rubenstein, Astrotopia: the Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race (University of Chicago Press, 2022) a book which raises the issue of humankind’s increasingly exploitative attitude to space exemplified in the attitudes of such figures as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, described by the reviewer as ‘both so grotesquely wealthy that they can have dreams of both colonising space and the funds to achieve those aims’. It is clear too that the United States no longer views ‘outer space as the common heritage of all humanity.’ In the light of this how should we progress human interaction with space?
Inside the former NSP meeting-house Ballymoney (Photo: David Steers)
Liz McManus is a former Minister for Housing and Urban Renewal in the Republic of Ireland. Since leaving politics she has become a writer and in When Things Come To Light (Arlen House, 2023) she has drawn on her own family experiences to ‘craft an insightful and compelling novel’ in the words of Derek McAuley, our reviewer. Liz McManus’s grandparents were Unitarians/Non-Subscribers from County Antrim. Remarkably life took them to the Khasi Hills where (in the novel at least) they encounter the Rev Margaret Barr and Kissor Singh, the founder of the Unitarian Church in North India. In a strange piece of synchronicity Kissor Singh quotes St Paul ‘Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind’, words which Liz McManus’s grandfather recognises as inscribed on the wall of his home church back in Ballymoney in Ulster. A fascinating novel incorporating Unitarians, family history, Ireland and India.
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Between 7th and 9th May, Dunmurry congregation was visited by four Unitarian ministers from Great Britain. These included Rev Laura Dobson, minister at Chorlton, Rev Mária Pap, minister at Mansfield, Francis Elliot-Wright, student minister at Knutsford, and Rev Jim Corrigall, the London District Minister. On the evening of Tuesday, 7th May Dunmurry congregation welcomed them, plus members of other congregations and a good number of local ministers, to a social evening in the McCleery Hall. I conducted an interview/dialogue with Jim who told us about his role as London District Minister, growing up in South Africa and his anti-apartheid activities, his decades as a journalist around the world which took him to Northern Ireland among other places, as well as the theological reflections which led him eventually to enter the ministry. As part of the evening Jim shared with us the reading that means most to him in his ministry – ‘God’s Grandeur’ by Gerard Manley Hopkins – and we listened to his favourite piece of music – Nkosi Sikelel iAfrika, God Bless Africa. It was a great night enjoyed by everyone.
Left to right Rev Dr David Steers, Rev Mária Pap, Rev Lynda Kane, Rev Laura Dobson, Francis Elliot-Wright, Rev Jim Corrigall, Rev Stephen Reain Adair, Rev Brian Moodie in the McCleery Hall, Dunmurry.
On Wednesday morning we made an early start in the company of a group of members of Dunmurry and First Church to visit six churches in Belfast and county Down and learn something about their history and witness. Thanks to Gary Douds we were taken around the churches in a minibus in great comfort and we were also blessed with fantastic weather.
Some of the party at Dunmurry, ready to set off at 9.00 am.
Laura, Jim, Francis and Mária visit the grave of Rev Alexander Gordon (Principal of the Unitarian Home Missionary College) at Dunmurry.
Outside Rademon later in the day.
In most of the churches I said something about the building and the history of the congregation and in Rademon Jim Ferris shared his historical expertise to give us a talk about his congregation. Our thanks go to all the ministers and members who welcomed us in our travels including Des McKeown, Rev Chris Hudson, Rev Dr Heather Walker, Mary Stewart and David Rooney, as well as Jim Ferris.
Des McKeown welcomes everyone to First Church, Rosemary Street.
Rev Chris Hudson welcomes everyone in the chancel in All Souls’.
We had lunch in Denvir’s in Downpatrick and returned to Dunmurry just 15 minutes later than our planned schedule had anticipated, so all in all a great day out.
In Downpatrick.
Jim Ferris explains the history of Rademon.
We visited in turn Dunmurry (1779), First Belfast (1783), All Souls’ Belfast (1896), Rademon (1713), Downpatrick (1711) and Clough (1837), buildings of different styles and ages but all with their own story to tell as part of our distinctive tradition.
The latest issue of the Transactions (Volume 28 Number 3) will soon be on its way to members. Details of how to join the Society can be found below.
As ever the journal is full of interesting articles and contains:
The National Conference 1882-1928 – a Unitarian Talking Shop
by Alan Ruston
James Martineau’s carte de visite
One year before the bi-centenary of the British & Foreign Unitarian Association Alan Ruston looks at the other less well-known institution which came together with the B&FUA to form the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches in 1928. Although not founded by James Martineau, The National Conference of Unitarian, Liberal Christian, Free Christian. Presbyterian, and Other Non-Subscribing or Kindred Congregations, to give it its full title, was always under the influence of the great man. Even if the body was essentially ‘a Unitarian Talking Shop’ it was nevertheless an institution that made an important contribution to the development of national Unitarian organization in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
‘Holding Space Sacred’: Struggles for Land and Home in Great Britain and Ireland, and Beyond
by Derek McAuley
The site of Croft Unitarian Chapel today featuring the new signage erected through the efforts of Cheyvonne Bower who has done so much to restore and protect the site.
Based on a talk delivered as part of a webinar presented by the Reckoning International Unitarian/Universalist Histories Project on 15 November 2022 on ‘Global Struggles for Land and Home in Unitarian/Universalist Communities’, this paper explores the themes of ‘land and home’ within nineteenth-century Unitarianism. It looks particularly at events in Wales, Ireland, the British overseas Dominions plus the legal challenges that led to the Dissenters’ Chapels Act of 1844, and the role of women. One woman who is particularly highlighted is Ellen Yates who helped to establish the Unitarian cause at Croft after they were dispossessed of their chapel at Risley.
Training for the ministry, 1903-1910: Ernest Pickering at Manchester College Oxford
by Oliver Pickering
From ‘The Non-Subscribing Presbyterian’ 1921
Oliver Pickering examines the rich training for the ministry received by his grandfather at Manchester College, Oxford between the years 1907 and 1910 which were preceded by four years as an external exhibitioner at the College while also studying Classics at Exeter College. This seems to have been something of a golden age for ministerial training at Oxford, and his seven years at Manchester College were the prelude to a remarkable career as a minister (at Hyde; All Souls’ Church, Belfast; Southport and Oldham), a Member of Parliament and a professor of English Literature in Tokyo.
This issue also includes Reviews and a Supplement: Obituaries of Ministers of Unitarian and Free Christian Congregations. Index and synopsis of references including new entries, additions and corrections from 1st February 2021 compiled by Alan Ruston.
This book (first published, I now realise, back in 2014!) has just been reprinted and, the original print run having sold out, is once again available. The publishers and printers have done an excellent job, it’s an attractive book, this time published in memory of Bernard Cliffe, Len Mooney and Rev Daphne Roberts, three contributors who have died since the original publication.
The full list of contributors and subjects is as follows:
Introduction, David Steers; Memorials of the Ancient Chapel of Toxteth Park, Bernard Cliffe; Jeremiah Horrocks 1618 – 1641, Bernard Cliffe; William Roscoe 1753 – 1831, David Steers; A Short History of the Rathbone Family, Annette Butler; The Unitarian Family of George Holt, Bernard Cliffe; Noah Jones 1801 – 1861, Philip Waldron; James Martineau 1805 – 1900, Len W. Mooney; Joseph Blanco White 1775 – 1841, David Steers; Kitty Wilkinson 1786 – 1860, Daphne Roberts; John Johns 1801 – 1847, David Steers; William Henry Channing 1810 – 1884, Richard Merritt; Charles Pierre Melly 1829 – 1888, John Keggen; Sir Henry Tate 1819 – 1899, Richard Merritt; Sir John Brunner 1842 – 1919, Len W. Mooney; Lawrence Redfern 1888 – 1967, Elizabeth Alley; Sir Adrian Boult 1889 – 1983, Richard Merritt; The Visitors’ Book of the Ancient Chapel, Bernard Cliffe.
Published by the Merseyside District Missionary Association the cover design is by Alison Steers and the book contains over 50 illustrations, many published here for the first time.
To accompany the republication we have produced a short video which incorporates a trip around Ullet Road Church which can be seen here:
Click on the video for a tour of Ullet Road Church and details of the book
The cover of the book
Liverpool Unitarians: Faith and Action Essays exploring the lives and contributions to society of notable figures in Liverpool Unitarian history
Edited by Daphne Roberts and David Steers
Published by Merseyside and District Missionary Association
ISBN: 978-0-9929031-0-7
Brand new edition for 2024
Price £10 (plus £2 post and packing). Available from Rev Phil Waldron, Ullet Road Church, 57 Ullet Road, Sefton Park, Liverpool. L17 2AA.
In the Introduction I say:
This book is not intended to be hagiography but it does try to outline how one group of people – members of a particular faith community with deep historical roots but with an aversion to fixed creeds – were inspired to serve their fellows in different ways. Their legacy can be seen all over the city – in its parks, in its monuments, in the university, in hospitals, in education, in art galleries and museums – and it exists in the long and continuing struggle to create a society that gives equality and opportunity to all its citizens. It is not meant to be an exhaustive account of all the eminent members of the churches and chapels in the region. Readers will notice that the names mentioned are part of wider connections of family and business which includes many others who could be included. There are other figures who could be the subject of such biographical accounts. But this is a selection of some of those who have followed the call of faith to be of service to wider society.
Hale is a pretty little place close to Liverpool and now in Cheshire, although traditionally located in Lancashire. Without doubt though, its most famous son is John Middleton, the ‘Childe of Hale’.
Click on the video above to discover the story of the Childe of Hale
Visiting the village recently I made this video to record the story of John Middleton who was said to have been 9 feet 3 inches tall, so tall that at night his feet were said to protrude out of the windows of his house.
John Middleton’s house
His life story is bound up with that of Sir Gilbert Ireland, whose body guard he was, and through whose connections he visited Brasenose College, Oxford and was presented to King James I in London.
Brasenose College, Oxford which has a number of portraits of John Middleton and still names the eights boat of the rowing club ‘The Childe of Hale’.
Modern statue of the Childe of Hale by Diane Gorvin
Although the village pub is named after him it used to be that there was a lot less visibly connected to him there, apart from his grave. Nowadays there is a plentiful supply of plaques and notices and a more than life size statue. But his grave is still the object of everyone’s visit to Hale. Strangely lettered the inscription reads, once you have worked it out, ‘Borne 1578 Dyede 1623 Here Lyeth the Bodie of John Middleton the Childe Nine Feet Three.’ Locally, in recent decades, he was always more associated with Speke Hall because his most famous portrait was long displayed there, but he had no direct connection with Speke Hall. The Ireland family, the local landowners whom he served, lived at the long demolished Hale Hall.
The grave of the Childe of Hale
Hale Hall, now demolished
Hale still has its Manor House, which once inspired John Betjeman to verse, and the local church is well worth seeing but you can hear the full story of the Childe of Hale by clicking on the video at the tope of this page.
The Manor House, Hale
St Mary’s Church, Hale with John Middleton’s grave in the foreground
I was pleased to be present for the inauguration of the new statue of Frederick Douglass on Monday, 31st July 2023. I only found out about it by chance but it was good to be there for the formal recognition of Frederick Douglass as part of Belfast’s history.
Frederick Douglass was born a slave in February 1818, on Holme Hill Farm, near Easton, Talbot County, Maryland. Although slaves were not supposed to be taught to read he was taught the alphabet, taught himself to read and developed a life-long reading habit.
In 1838, at his third attempt, he successfully escaped from slavery and managed to get to New York where he married Anna Murray (1813–1882) of Baltimore. He became a preacher in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church and an associate of William Lloyd Garrison and an activist in the anti-slavery movement.
The Lord Mayor introduces the speakers
In 1845 he published the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, the first of three volumes of autobiography, and became so prominent in the anti-slavery movement that threats were made against him which led to him travelling to Britain and Ireland on a speaking tour. He spent two years speaking all over England, Scotland and Ireland. In Dublin he shared a platform with Daniel O’Connell and British supporters raised $700 to buy his freedom in the United States. This in itself was controversial as many thought it wrong to give any recognition to the idea that a human being could be bought or sold as someone’s property.
Some of those present
In the words of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, during his speaking tour:
He filled public halls, private homes, chapels, and churches, his audiences sometimes numbering thousands, and he often spoke on different subjects at more than one meeting a day. As well as making the abolitionist case, he spoke on women’s rights (he felt that he could not accept the vote as a black man if it was denied to women), temperance, land reform, education, and capital punishment, issues on which he never ceased to agitate.
Alan Beattie Herriot, sculptor
Of his time in Belfast he wrote:
I shall always remember the people of Belfast, and the kind friends I now see around me, and wherever else I feel myself to be a stranger, I will remember I have a home in Belfast.
Words which are among those inscribed on the plinth of his statue.
At the opening of the statue Professor Christine Kinealy said that in Belfast he spoke in Rosemary Street Presbyterian Church. But this is ambiguous because there were then three churches on Rosemary Street, two non-subscribing and one orthodox. The booklet available at the opening also suggested that he spoke in First Church on Rosemary Street. In fact he spoke at the meeting-house of the Second (Non-Subscribing) Congregation which stood behind First Church and was finally demolished in the early 1960s. He was granted the use of the meeting-house of the Second Congregation on 7th December 1845 ‘to lecture on behalf of the Anti-Slavery Society’. But it is very fitting that he should have such a fine statue erected in his memory so close to Rosemary Street.
The view looking towards Rosemary StreetLooking down Lombard Street
You can’t help but be impressed by Coventry Cathedral, impressed because everything is given such height. The entrance area that connects with the old cathedral; the glass entrance screen featuring angels and saints; the baptistry window; the Chapel of Unity; Graham Sutherland’s tapestry of Christ in Glory; the walls themselves – everything is so high. And it is all so redolent of the cutting edge of art in the mid-1950s. Of course, absolutely every building can only reflect the times it was built in but I think for a building as important as a cathedral some attempt at transcending the contraints of the present day are necessary. Now I may be very naive to imagine that a medieval Gothic cathedral ever did this, or any other type of cathedral for that matter, but if you want to be pointed to some deeper experience of the divine through the medium of a building you need something that says more than ‘This is 1954’ writ large. Even Liverpool’s Metropolitan Cathedral, which speaks volumes for the 1960s and the heavy constraints placed by money and circumstances on building a cathedral by that date, still communicates very well a more profound encounter with the truly spiritual.
Coventry Cathedral has developed a living and active ministry of reconciliation which has reached out to the whole world. Its response to the horrors of the blitz and the destruction of the old cathedral has been an inspiration to many. But as a visitor to the building, a very occasional one, I am never really sure how to respond.
The thing I remember most about visiting as a child is Jacob Epstein’s figure of St Michael conquering the devil. I think I found it a bit unsettling as a kid and I am not sure I feel any better about it now. What is it meant to communicate? Of course, I know literally what it is meant to mean, but what did it say to the world in 1962 when it was unveiled? And what does it say now? Outside the cathedral there is a slightly cloying poster which stresses the extent of the welcome given to visitors but what the ‘keep-fit mums, football dads, starving artists, tree-huggers, latte-sippers, vegans, junk food eaters…those who think the earth is flat, work too hard, don’t work, can’t spell, or are here because granny is visiting and wanted to look round’ will make of Epstein’s work is a difficult question. Cutting edge art of the 1950s has now become the imagery of horror, fantasy, comic books, movies, cartoons and anime. Does anyone feel liberated by seeing St Michael with swan’s wings getting one over the character from Hellboy? One thing we know for sure today is that evil in the world does not take that form.
But some parts of the cathedral are breathtaking. The baptistry window, designed by John Piper, floods that part of the building with an explosion of light and colour. Again its immensity hits you full on.
The same is true when you look back at the entrance screen with its dozens of ascending figures flying up in front of the old cathedral.
Again part of this is the scale, and the combination of massive candlesticks, the very high choir stalls and the stained glass that is only visible when you look back from the altar all contribute to this impressive immensity.
Even what might be termed the brutalist elements of the structure continue to impress. The wall that lets light on to the chancel and the tapestry has a grandeur and a solidity still, but if it had been placed out of doors in a housing estate or in a car park or shopping centre it would have had to have been demolished years ago:
The focus of the cathedral is Graham Sutherland’s tapestry of Christ in Glory. Once again this is so impressive because of its size; a massive tapestry, woven by hand in a single piece, weighing around a ton, it’s a remarkable piece of work. Standing between Christ’s feet is the figure of a man, emphasising humanity’s smallness before the grandeur of God.
The great height is continued in the Chapel of Unity
but not so much in the Chapel of Christ the Servant which is lined by walls of plain glass, giving a brightness and an openness to the chapel. When I was there a very moving exhibition of quotations from letters home from Indian soldiers serving in the First World War was on display, one on each window.
The Chapel of Christ in Gethsemane is also different, it resembles a cave and the sculpture on the wall by Steven Sykes shows Jesus being ministered to by an angel. It is viewed through a crown of thorns.
The ruins of the old cathedral emphasise the horrors of the blitz
and fittingly a memorial records the sacrifices of those who served on the home front in the Second World War.
One of the few things to survive the blitz in the old cathedral is the tomb of Bishop Yeatman-Biggs, the first Bishop of Coventry. He holds a model of the cathedral and, curiously, his mitre includes a swastika in its decoration. The guide book doesn’t call it a swastika but names it as a fyflot. But as the guide book also says this was an ancient religious symbol, used in different cultures before it was adopted by Nazi Germany. But it does look strange on his mitre and it has gradually become shiny as generations of visitors have pointed to it in shock or surprise.
As a building it is somewhere that I find impressive and intriguing. It does represent a positive response to the horrors of war and an affirmation that faith can overcome suffering and reach out where there has been hatred, and this is all for the good. Parts of it are wonderfully impressive and uplifting but I can’t say that, as a building, it really speaks to me in the way other cathedrals do. But it will always communicate a certain kind of optimism and fortitude that came out of the immediate post-war period.
velvethummingbee 