FROM THE ARCHIVES
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Re: Thought experiment
[Rod Dreher 03/13 12:10 PM]Reader Jason writes: The time I spent in Western Europe convinced me that Christianity there is on its last legs. Going to the churches just hammered the idea home, as most were museums and not functioning as churches. Standing in those great edifices did not bring me closer to God, as the body of His church no longer tread those stones. They had been transformed from monuments to God's glory to a pile of artfully arranged rocks.
On the other hand, I have also spent some time in the Dallas area's churches, some of them snidely ascribed the prefix, "mega." The superficial difference is one of architecture. The real difference is that the superficially gauche "mega" churches are living, working parts of Christ's Body.
If I have to choose a target for the terrorist to level, let the dead rocks fall and let Christ's living church remain intact, despite its lack of graceful medieval architecture. I'd rather a tourist attraction be destroyed than a functioning church.
It’s not supposed to be about the external trappings. This applies to family and self, as well as church.This is an interesting point. Christianity is virtually dead in Europe, something we will probably discuss soon, when we talk about the Religion chapter. I was at mass one morning last December at Notre Dame de Paris. Very few other people were. I saw the sun rising through one of the rose windows, a masterwork of Christian civilization, and wondered for how much longer the sun will shine through that window on Christian souls worshiping there. Obviously, aesthetics are not enough to save a dying faith.
But they are important. “Christ’s living church,” in Jason’s words — the actual human beings that constitute the church — would still survive the loss of their building. They could just build another megachurch. If the Chartres cathedral were lost, it would be an unmitigated cultural catastrophe, and not just for Christians. I do not agree that the Chartres cathedral is not still a monument to God’s glory. I first saw it in 1984, as a 17-year-old of no particularly strong religious faith. I was so overwhelmed by its beauty and grandeur that I felt a strong urge to know more about the religious imagination that caused such a spectacular edifice to be built. Beauty, then, got me on the road to conversion. I suspect I’m not alone. A similar point: is Bach’s “St. Matthew’s Passion” a truer expression of the divine character than “Shine Jesus Shine” or “On Eagle’s Wings”? Does the St. Matthew’s Passion have more to teach us about God than these other populist hymns?
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