Patterns

Yesterday I took a confirmation candidate from Swanvale Halt to a church not too far away for the deanery confirmation service. It was all very much as expected, with clergy not knowing where to sit and choruses none of us could sing as they don't have proper tunes. But what I really objected to was the state of the 'refreshments' afterwards. Confirmations are glorious, celebratory occasions, a privilege for a parish church to host, and it may be that candidates have brought not-very-Christian family and friends with them. The very least they deserve after an hour and a half of concentrated religion is more than a couple of plates of inch-wide strips of sandwich, carrot sticks, and two bowls of olives. There may have been more than two, but you get the point, especially when there's 150 people there. It was easily the meanest spread I've ever seen at a church event. And no quiche! You can't be sure it's the Anglican Church at all if there's no quiche. This would never have happened in Lambourne. It would never even be tolerated in little Swanvale Halt.

Anyway. The interesting thing about this church is the interior arrangements. I think they'd probably describe themselves as 'open evangelical' in style. Like a number of bigger churches, such as St Aldate's in Oxford and St Helen's Bishopsgate, they've re-orientated their traditional-style building so that the business end is now the south wall, leaving the old chancel as a side chapel and the former nave as a very wide, shallow worship space (I refrain from the easy jibe that 'wide and shallow' is at all descriptive of the evangelical movement ...). This is a liturgical fashion I find interesting in its own right, and which nobody seems to have said or written very much about. But here there is something a little different. Here there is an apse around the altar. 'It felt right to put in something that emphasised the altar' said the vicar, not that he was here when the work was done, being a relatively recent arrival. And as you can see from the photo, the altar is not some measly little table such as 'liberal Catholic' churches tend to install, but a rather monumental piece of work with a positively grand frontal. Dress code for last night wasn't surplice and scarf but alb and stole. What strikes me here is the instinctive re-emergence of Catholic forms and signs in circumstances where nobody is actually intending to think of things in such terms.

Here's the worship area arranged for a small communion service.