Building faith - Comment - historical overview of religious buildings

Architectural Review, The, March, 2003 by Catherine Slessor

Even today, with interest in organized religion on the wane, sacred architecture, in its many forms, still expresses and manifests human striving to connect with a sense of the divine.

'In building this chapel I wanted to create a place of silence, of prayer, of peace and internal joy. The feeling of the sacred animated us. Some things are sacred, others not, irrespective of whether or not they are religious.' (1)

So affirmed Le Corbusier in his dedication speech at the Chapel of Notre-Dame-du-Haut at Ronchamp in 1955. Ronchamp is a pivotal moment in modern church architecture, a remarkable pantheistic celebration of the mystical presence of the divine, its interior a ravishing synthesis of space and light and its prominent setting on a hill, like a Greek temple, evoking traditions which stretch back far beyond Christianity as a universal expression of the sacred. But this masterpiece was also, as Edwin Heathcote notes, 'a virtual disaster for ecclesiastical design from the liturgical point of view; [leading] to a spate of idiotic "gestures", buildings symbolizing anything from praying hands to doves; buildings emanating from a single bland idea, justified in the name of the new modernism'. (2) Happily oblivious to the demands of liturgical functionalism and the future consequences of unflattering imitation, Corb adopted a suitably lofty position -- when asked if it was necessary to have believed in God to build Roncha mp he is said to have replied 'No, it was necessary to believe in architecture'.

As the last century resoundingly demonstrated, human existence is now largely secular, with religion seen as a marginal, futile and slightly nonsensical pursuit. Thanks to scientific rationalism we now have answers for (almost) everything and thanks to global capitalism the developed world enjoys a level of material fulfilment beyond our ancestors' wildest imaginings. Fundamentalism of all flavours has contrived to corrode and denigrate genuine faith, making it an object of casual scorn or hysterical hostility. (Prior to the chaotic and bloody break-up of the former Yugoslavia, speculation abounded that the country's growing Muslim population might transform the former Communist enclave into Europe's first Islamic state. Thus ensued what was essentially a modern holy war, conducted along the fault lines of competing tribal religions.)

In CBDs the world over, Mammon has replaced God as the object of slavering, unquestioning veneration, business bureaucrats have superseded popes as the great patrons of art and architecture (underlining the Church's loss of its historical wealth, status and power) and shopping is the new religion (although there have always been ways to buy your place in heaven -- Giotto's exquisite, transcendent frescoes at the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, for example, were commissioned by Enrico Scrovegni, son of a notorious usurer Reginaldo, in attempted expiation of his father's sins. Scrovegni senior was condemned by Dante to the Seventh Circle of Hell; Scrovegni junior is portrayed devoutly offering up a model of his chapel to the Virgin, epitomizing the often questionable relationship between art, religion and patronage).

The sacred and the secular

Yet despite currently occupying the margins of contemporary life, religion, mythology and ritual are fundamental aspects of human consciousness. Before the modern age, religion and daily existence were essentially inseparable and there was little distinction between the spiritual and the secular. Even with the benefits bestowed by intellectual and technological progress, much of our social behaviour originates in the past and the human psyche has been immutably shaped by preceding generations. As Thomas Barrie points out 'We are the same species that painted the walls of our subterranean chapels in France and Spain with images of our animal gods, grunted with exertion as we dragged sarsen megaliths across Salisbury Plain, and knelt in adoration before the relics of a saint'. (3)

Today, traces of our former mythological and spiritual life tend to be expressed in quasi religious behaviour. As in other areas of culture, architecture embraces and appropriates ancient rites, though often unconsciously. Groundbreaking ceremonies for new buildings symbolically consecrate the site, and the act of topping out marks the completion of the superstructure by attaching a sprig of pine to its tallest point, symbolizing rebirth and regeneration.

Religion and myth have long served as a means of explaining the world and our place within it. The creation of belief systems provided answers to questions of existence and reinforced a crucial sense of security in hostile physical and social environments. Architecture serves a similar purpose, transcending function to respond to symbolic needs and expressing meanings associated with human existence at its deepest and most fundamental level. Religious beliefs are made manifest by rituals and ceremonies that are generators of a bewildering multiplicity of architectural forms, whether the prayer halls of Islam, the monumental stupas of Buddhism, Mesoamerican pyramids, Greek temples, Jewish synagogues, Shinto shrines or Christian churches. Such diversity is not merely pragmatic, with architecture acting as a stage for the enactment of myth through ritual; the myth is embodied in the form of the architecture, the act of the ritual and the interplay between them.