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There’s a church in the valley by the wildwood. No lovelier spot in the dale . . . It was a song to end the hot and snappy concert of a gospel quartet helping raise money for a new civic center in a sprawling midwestern city. It was a melody once found in …
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Aldous Huxley once observed that there ought to be a way to talk about mystical experience in terms of biochemistry, psychology and theology. Even more, we ought to be able to talk about all human experience in such a cross-disciplinary way. What might a conversation about the brain, mind and God be like? In what …
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I walk into the bombed-out nave, its windows empty of stained glass, only its roofless sandstone walls revealing the medieval cathedral that crumpled under Nazi explosions. A few yards away rises Coventry’s new postwar cathedral, but I begin here in the ruined shell’s sobering chill. On the night of 14 November 1940, Hermann Goering, chief …
Continue reading “Coventry Cathedral’s Message of Forgiveness”
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Houses of worship have certain physical characteristics that appeal to the senses. Building materials are often precious and placed with care. They include carvings of symbolic and allegorical meaning. Through their design and decoration, churches tell stories of the faith. Stained-glass windows lift one’s spirits from earthly concerns. Vast interiors not only accommodate those who …
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Most buildings that are architectural prize-winners when new go unnoticed 25 years later. But some continue to be admired. A few years ago the American Institute of Architecture began to give one award each year to a 25-year-old structure, and in 1976 the choice for this award was Christ Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, the last …
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Book Reviews: When Church Became Theatre: The Transformation of Evangelical Church Architecture and Worship in Nineteenth-Century America. By Jeanne Halgren Kilde. Oxford University Press, 310 pp., $45.00. Ugly as Sin: Why They Changed Our Churches from Sacred Places to Meeting Spaces — and How We Can Change Them Back Again. By Michael S. Rose. …
