{"id":2740,"date":"2008-04-01T17:24:38","date_gmt":"2008-04-01T22:24:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/2008\/04\/01\/it-is-the-only-fighting-architecture\/"},"modified":"2008-04-01T17:24:38","modified_gmt":"2008-04-01T22:24:38","slug":"it-is-the-only-fighting-architecture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/2008\/04\/it-is-the-only-fighting-architecture\/","title":{"rendered":"It is the only fighting architecture"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reading through G.K. Chesterton’s
\nMiscellany
\nof Men<\/a> I came across this:<\/p>\n

The truth about Gothic is, first, that
\nit is alive, and second, that it
\nis on the march.  It is the Church Militant; it is the only
\nfighting architecture.  All its spires are spears at rest; and
\nall its
\nstones are
\nstones asleep in a catapult. In that instant of illusion, I could hear
\nthe arches clash like swords as they crossed each other.  The
\nmighty and numberless columns seemed to go swinging by like the huge
\nfeet of
\nimperial elephants.  The graven foliage wreathed and blew like
\nbanners
\ngoing into battle; the silence was deafening with ail the mingled
\nnoises of a military march; the great bell shook down, as the organ
\nshook up its thunder.  The thirsty-throated gargoyles shouted
\nlike trumpets
\nfrom all the roofs and pinnacles as they passed; and from the lectern
\nin the core of the cathedral the eagle of the awful evangelist clashed
\nhis wings of brass,<\/p>\n

And amid all the noises I seemed to hear the voice of a man shouting in
\nthe midst like one ordering regiments hither and thither in the fight;
\nthe voice of the great half-military master-builder; the architect of
\nspears.  I could almost fancy he wore armour while he made
\nthat church; and I
\nknew indeed that, under a scriptural figure, he had borne in either
\nhand the trowel and the sword.<\/p>\n

I could imagine for the moment that the whole of that house of life had
\nmarched out of the sacred East, alive and interlocked, like an army.
\n Some Eastern nomad had found it solid and silent in the red
\ncircle of
\nthe desert.  He had slept by it as by a world-forgotten
\npyramid;
\nand been woke at midnight by the wings of stone and brass, the tramping
\nof the tall pillars, the trumpets of the waterspouts.  On such
\na night
\nevery snake or sea-beast must have turned and twisted in every crypt or
\ncorner of the architecture.  And the fiercely coloured saints
\nmarching
\neternally in the flamboyant windows would have carried their glorioles
\nlike torches
\nacross dark lands and distant seas; till the whole mountain of music
\nand
\ndarkness and lights descended roaring on the lonely Lincoln
\nhill.  So
\nfor some hundred and sixty seconds I saw the battle-beauty of the
\nGothic; then
\nthe last furniture-van shifted itself away; and I saw only a church
\ntower
\nin a quiet English town, round which the English birds were floating.<\/p>\n

This helps me to see something that I
\ndon’t like about modern church architecture in that it seems to me to
\nbe a surrender or something defensive.  That the Church
\nmilitant has surrendered to architectural fads that are quite cold and
\nmuch more like a dead thing than being alive.  The L.A.
\nCathedral is defensive since it looks much more like a concrete bunker
\nthan a church alive and on the move proclaiming Christ.  That
\nwith older forms of sacred architecture a church proudly proclaimed
\nitself as a church directed towards the glory of God while some forms
\nof modern style meekly proclaims I am a church, but I might be a bank
\nor an auditorium. <\/p>\n

There is also this nice bit about the need
\nfor a creed.<\/p>\n

And it is supremely so in the case of
\nreligion.  As long as you have a creed, which every one in a
\ncertain group believes or is supposed to believe, then that group will
\nconsist of the old recurring figures of religious history, who can be
\nappealed to by the creed and judged by it; the saint, the hypocrite,
\nthe brawler, the weak brother. 
\nThese people do each other good; or they all join together to do the
\nhypocrite good,
\nwith heavy and repeated blows.  But once break the bond of
\ndoctrine
\nwhich alone holds these people together and each will gravitate to his
\nown kind outside the group.  The hypocrites will all get
\ntogether and
\ncall each other saints; the saints will get lost in a desert and call
\nthemselves weak brethren; the weak brethren will get weaker and weaker
\nin a general atmosphere of imbecility; and the brawler will go off
\nlooking for
\nsomebody else with whom to brawl.\n<\/p>\n

The problem with Chesterton is that he is
\ntoo quotable and you go from page to page thinking I got to remember
\nthat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading through G.K. Chesterton’s Miscellany of Men I came across this: The truth about Gothic is, first, that it is alive, and second, that it is on the march.  It…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2740\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}