Sacred Architecture

 I'm a fool for sacred architecture, as so much of this blog attests.  I love the diversity of it, the unique psychology of each sacred place, the wide array of feelings that the different churches, and synagogues, and mosques, and shrines arouse in the visitor's spirit.  I like the stark elegance of early American Protestant meetinghouses.  I like the otherworldly loftiness of Roman and especially Eastern Orthodox basilicas.  I like the intricate patterns of Islamic art, and the scroll-like design of Jewish temples.  The sacred places of Theravada Buddhism, in Southeast Asia, are spectacular, but I prefer the simpler Buddhist architecture of Japan.  Religion is a human product that aspires beyond the realm of the mundane, and for that I respect it.  

When I was young, I found all of this man-made beauty very convincing, and I lived in a book-induced world where the church was still an acceptable career option for a guy who liked poetry, and atmosphere, and ancient lore, and lofty ideals.  I realized that the clergyperson was always a minor character in any book or movie.  At best, he's the distinguished old fellow in medieval attire at the wedding or the funeral.  He's predictable in every way.  But his role was linked to these sacred buildings, which I found so hopeful and compelling.  

I especially like it when a sacred building expresses in architecture the philosophies and values of the community that worships there.  All of it is conditioned by a particular culture.  Of course, not all religious edifices are created equal; some congregations are too poor or uneducated to have artistic aspirations.  But here in Southwestern Pennsylvania, a rich past has endowed us with an abundance of sacred places whose very space communicates the ethos of its faith tradition.  Beauty is commonplace here.

This is Calvary Episcopal Church in the Shadyside neighborhood of Pittsburgh.  Its space speaks of mystery, and majesty, and a certain rootedness in history.  Of course, some might argue that it lays claim to the Middle Ages, an era in history that no American church has any right to call its own.  But that is part of its psychology: It tries to evoke a sense of the eternal by claiming a connectedness to things other than its own time and place.  Say what you will about its Anglophilic pretensions; it remains a beautiful place.  A part of its loveliness is the fact that its psychology is definitely not democratic.  It may even reflect the hierarchical values and exclusivity of the neighborhood around it.  There is a rood screen to separate the holiest area--around the altar--from the congregation.  There is a lofty pulpit, lifting the clergyperson above the laity.  The psychology of the place seems to echo the ancient belief in a "Chain of Being," in which the angels are closest to God, then the king, then the clergy, then the nobles, and finally the commoners...just above the animals.  This church's many shadows intimate that the Divinity is not entirely knowable, which of course is true...but it is only one truth among many.  When the obese night guard saw me on his monitor camera, he came to chase me away, looking huffy, and harried, and breathing as if he'd just run a marathon.