Volume 32 1962

Liturgy, Laity and Architecture

The Rev James A Whyte, MA, Professor of Practical Theology and Christian Ethics at St Mary’s College, the University of St Andrews

A quite outstanding article by Professor Whyte. His brief was to write/talk about church architecture, but he chooses to do so by exploring the relationship between the progress of the Liturgical movement, the increasing part played in worship by the laity, and the use of sacred space. The following quotation sets out the basis for the arguments in his paper. “One thing however, needs to be said strongly. These concerns must be held together. Whenever you take one of them – a concern for worship, or a concern for lay witness and service, or a concern for better church design, or anything else, and think of it as a thing apart, a thing on its own, out of relation to the whole life and being of the people of God in the world, you distort it. It becomes a fad, whose determining considerations tend to be one’s preconceived ideas of correctness or tradition, uncriticized by the faith and unrelated to the needs of the body of Christ in the world today.” What follows is an extensive cogent argument for the church building as “the house of the people of God”.

Illustrations

Illustrations in this volume

(All between pages 26 and 27)

The Church of the Three Brethren, Lochgoilhead: Interior The Parish Church of Caputh: Interior The Parish Church of Caputh: Interior The Parish Church of Caputh: A Distant View