by Andrew Gimson, Conservative Home
Twelve Churches: An Unlikely History of the Buildings That Made Christianity by Fergus Butler-Gallie
Fergus Butler-Gallie’s preferred speed is the canter, often rising to a gallop, seldom if ever slowing to a walk.
He is in a tearing hurry and does not seem to worry about falling off his not particularly high horse. Stylistic perfection does not interest him. He has 2,000 years, and many thousands of miles, to cover.
His approach has its advantages. As Vicar of Charlbury, in Oxfordshire, he might be expected to adopt a more limited frame of reference.
Instead he takes the world as his parish. His book is supposedly about 12 churches, starting with the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, and continuing through St Peter’s, Rome; Hagia Sophia in Istanbul; Canterbury Cathedral; the Pantocrator Monastery on Mount Athos; the great rock churches of Lalibela in Ethiopia; the Templo de Las Américas in the Dominican Republic; the Kirishitan Hokora or Christian Shrine at Mount Yasumandake in Japan; the First Meeting House in Salem, Massachusetts; Christ Church, Zanzibar; the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama; and Canaanland in Ota, Nigeria.
But really he wants to tell us the story of Christianity, restore it to its central place in western history, illuminate it with every kind of amusing detail, and indicate what it might teach us about such topics as faith, money, empire, the nation state, slavery, persecution and sex. Nobody should buy this book for use as an architectural guide.
For although Butler-Gallie makes some penetrating observations about the various buildings in his book, for most of the time he uses them as metaphors for the “beautiful paradoxes” of Christianity, and as pegs for other topics.