ABSTRACT
In this final part of the book I want to explore a number of issues related to religious architecture. Inevitably, a number of themes raised earlier will recur. One will be a continuing protest against the marginalisation of the arts, including architecture. Many, perhaps most, contemporary theologians continue to see their chosen professional area of competence as essentially revolving round a number of key intellectual questions, and so, even among those hostile to philosophy, it remains the case that it is something like the practice of philosophy that is seen as the most appropriate model, both in identifying legitimate questions and then in developing some sort of systematic relation between proposed answers. Yet, what is thereby circumvented is one fundamental feature of Christianity, and that is that it is a religion, where practice is no less important than theory, including thus of course the whole question of worship. But, if that is so, the buildings in which the community worships cease to be a relatively insignificant dimension but just as much part of what gives Christianity its identity as many a doctrinal formulation.
