ABSTRACT
So used are Protestant Christians to thinking of Christianity as a religion of the word that they often treat the place in which they worship and its internal decoration as matters of little or no importance: the wallpaper of faith, as it were. Even as cultured a scholar as C. S. Lewis allowed himself to fall foul of just such a fault when he contrasted the truth that could be found in a building and its art. 1 Not that Roman Catholics are necessarily any better. Prior to the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) the strongest focus was usually on the reserved sacrament and statues of particular patron saints rather than the building as a whole, whereas in more recent years the stress has tended to move to community experience rather than any sense of the impact of the building or the artworks contained within it. Part of the problem lies in a misunderstanding of what good religious art is trying to achieve, and that is the issue I will tackle in the first part of this essay. Thereafter, however, I want to move to the impact of the building as a whole, both in its own right and in relation to the art contained with it. Not only are worshippers often unaware of the subliminal effect that they will experience, however indifferent they pretend to be, but also of how opportunities will thereby be lost that might otherwise have effected a fully integrated experience in worship. For the truth is that art, architecture and worshipper will all fight against each other unless some basic principles are observed.
