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7 min read

The bold museum reflecting a “moonlight” experience of the unseeable

Robert Wright visits the UK's only Faith Museum, in Bishop Auckland, and hears how its funder hopes to inspire reflection on the divine.

Robert is a journalist at the Financial Times.

 

A art installaton showing purple and pink flame-like shapes moving in a darkened room
The Eidolon art installation.

It takes a moment to grow accustomed to walking in the dark of the long, steeply roofed room that houses Mat Collishaw’s art installation Eidolon. But the artwork’s impact is immediate. Two huge, moving images in the middle of the room show a blue iris flower. It is being engulfed by flames but not consumed. Speakers play, in Latin, a story from the Hebrew bible’s Book of Daniel in which three young Jewish men survive being thrown into a fiery furnace for refusing to worship the Babylonian king. The artwork is a rare successful attempt to capture in modern art the essence of Christ’s crucifixion and the Christian tradition of martyrdom, with its roots in earlier Jewish beliefs.

Watch Eidolon

Eidolon is one of the highlights of the UK’s first Faith Museum, a bold project opened on October 7 in Bishop Auckland castle, the historic residence of the Bishops of Durham. The museum forms part of The Auckland Project, a series of initiatives in Bishop Auckland, north-west of Darlington, being funded by Jonathan Ruffer, a Christian and successful City investor. Ruffer’s childhood home was outside nearby Middlesbrough. The new institution aims to tell the story of 6,000 years of faith in Great Britain, starting with the Gainford cup and ring stone. The stone, found 90 years ago 10 miles from Bishop Auckland, may date from as early as 4,000BCE. It features carvings regarded as the earliest evidence of religious practice in Great Britain. 

Jonathan Ruffer.

A man stands in a formal dining room that has traditional paintings on the walls
Jonathan Ruffer, in Bishop Auckland Castle.

Ruffer, however, declines to link the museum’s contents to his own faith or an explicitly Christian message. He insists that he is merely seeking to advance discussion of faith in a society where it is little debated but remains a potent force. In the living room of Castle Lodge, his home in the castle grounds, Ruffer compares the contemporary taboo about religion with the very different mores of the 19th century. 

“Nobody talked about sex in Victorian times,” he says. “It’s impossible to imagine that because the public world was silent on it, it was not as much a guiding force as it is today. I think that’s where faith is now.” 

He adds that the 10-year process of establishing the museum has made it “absolutely apparent” to him why there are no other similar institutions. 

“What is a museum for?” he asks. “It’s to gawp at things and if you think what is the subject matter of a faith museum, it’s God. In whatever form and shape that you believe that God to be, you cannot see that topic.” 

The museum is nevertheless rich in sometimes poignant objects that the curators call “witnesses” of faith. They include the Binchester Ring, a ring with Christian symbols dating from the third century of the Christian era. The ring, found only a mile from the museum, is regarded as the earliest known evidence for Christian practice in Britain. There is a small slate, engraved on one side, that served as an altar for Recusant Roman Catholics while their Church was out in the cold and had to stay hidden during the Reformation years. The slate could be turned over and disguised as a normal roof slate when not in use. The museum has on loan the Bodleian Bowl – a rare example of a ceremonial vessel used by one of England’s Jewish communities before King Edward I expelled the group in 1290. 

Ruffer says the impact of the objects – many on loan from other museums - comes from their histories. 

“There’s a great power in the objects that we have,” he says. 

Eileen Harrop.

A priest stands in front of lead glass windows and carved seats.
Eileen Harrop, entrepreneur priest and museum advisor.

Among the advisers on the museum’s establishment was Eileen Harrop, a Church of England priest originally from Singapore and of Chinese origin. She was appointed an “entrepreneur priest” in 2016 to work with Ruffer on The Auckland Project. Meeting in the castle’s former library, she says the museum avoids suggesting all faiths are the same, while also steering clear of Christian proselytising. Harrop, now the vicar of four parishes around Bishop Auckland, expects the museum to have a powerful effect on visitors. 

“It allows for people to experience the God who led Jonathan here,” she says. “It allows for people to enter into all the different ways in which people can identify something about faith and then it’s up to God.” 

A visit’s emotional impact comes largely from the new institution’s first floor, devoted to works created by contemporary artists exploring faith. Some of the most powerful exhibits are black-and-white pictures in which Khadija Saye, a young British-Gambian artist, explores possible uses for religious objects belonging to members of her family, some Muslim and some Christian. Saye lost her life in the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire. 

A series of works by Christian painter Roger Wagner has proved particularly timely. The museum opened the same day that Hamas terrorists started the current Israel-Gaza war with their attack inside Israel. The paintings translate stories from the Christian New Testament to the contemporary, riot-scarred occupied West Bank. 

Eidolon is among the works on the first floor. Harrop calls it an “amazing installation”, particularly for its retelling of the story of Daniel. 

“It relates a story… of what was going on in that particular experience of the faithful person called and protected with his companions in relation with God and the power of faith,” she says. 

Ruffer, meanwhile, shies away from expressing spiritual aspirations. 

Asked how he hopes people will respond to the museum, he says: “I couldn’t care less – that’s up to them. I have many faults but a sense of wanting to tell people or persuade people how they should be is very low down the list.” 

Yet Ruffer is clear that he received a clear, divine call to come to Bishop Auckland. He was first drawn to the area by his enthusiasm for Spanish art and his determination to prevent the Church of England’s Church Commissioners, then owners of the castle, from selling its prize artworks – life-size, 17th century portraits by Francisco de Zurbarán known as Jacob and his 12 Sons. The paintings, saved for Bishop Auckland in 2011 by a multi-million-pound donation by Ruffer, remain in the castle. But the Zurbarán link inspired Ruffer to establish a Spanish Gallery, dedicated to art from Spain, on Bishop Auckland’s Market Place. 

“I came here really through a calling,” Ruffer says. “I felt the need really to drop everything and come up to somewhere in the north-east, to be part of a community.” 

Ruffer’s engagement with the town deepened when the Church Commissioners announced, also in 2011, that they planned to sell the castle. Auckland Castle was formerly a seat of both ecclesiastical and secular power when the Bishops of Durham were prince-bishops – uniquely in England, both secular governors and bishops. The bishops lost the last of their secular powers in 1836. Ruffer bought the castle and transferred ownership to a newly established Auckland Castle Trust, which became The Auckland Project. 

“I’ve heard from people who have through it who have said they can’t really put their finger on what it is, but they must go back again,” 

Ruffer accepts there are issues with trying to capture the imagination of Bishop Auckland’s 25,000 inhabitants from inside a castle whose imposing entranceway symbolises its symbolic role as a seat of sometimes oppressive power. 

“That sense of power is felt as a reality by people,” he says. “But it’s empty. Power has long since moved away from the prince-bishops and then the bishops.” 

The castle’s unique history nevertheless makes it the ideal setting for the museum, according to Ruffer. Exhibits are housed both in a wing of the historic castle and a new, purpose-built extension. Ruffer says the castle was a far better place to site a faith museum aimed at raising questions than somewhere more explicitly linked to a specific faith such as a cathedral close. 

“Auckland Castle has been intricately involved with faith for nearly 1,000 years and yet it hasn’t been a place of worship,” he says. “It has a chapel but it’s ecclesiastical without being a cathedral, church or minster. So it seemed to me that that made it very appropriate for a faith museum.” 

The early signs, according to both Ruffer and Harrop, are that the new institution is encouraging reflection among visitors. Ruffer says the museum has responded to the “elemental need” for faith. He adds that the positive reaction so far vindicates the initiative to establish the museum, which he says has brought together objects and described them “without any directional guidance as to which works”. 

Harrop reports that visitors seem to feel the need to experience the museum a second time after a first visit. 

“I’ve heard from people who have through it who have said they can’t really put their finger on what it is, but they must go back again,” she says. 

Ruffer identifies the museum’s power by saying that it gives people an easier experience of the divine than would otherwise be available to them. He compares the experience of encountering God through the museum to looking at the light of the sun as reflected in soft moonlight. That, he points out, is far easier than looking painfully and directly at the sun. 

“The thing that changes people is to be confronted with something bigger than yourself,” he says. 

Article
Awe and wonder
Change
Community
Time
7 min read

The bells that awaken awe in the new year

We need new rhythms if we are to navigate the world as it is today.

Elizabeth Wainwright is a writer, coach and walking guide. She's a former district councillor and has a background in international development.

Restored church bells lined up in a cathedral, as crowds mill around them.
Notre Dame bells.
Notre Dame de Paris.

The jackdaws flap and caw as they come in to roost. The sun sets behind the bare trees; its fiery farewell doing nothing to warm the cold air. The village church bell rings out 4pm. My young daughter stops what she is doing, says “ding dong”, then carries on. That’s what we all used to do: stop what we were doing and be called to something else, the bell’s rhythmic tolls cutting through our individuality and unifying us for a time. Perhaps we would go to church, or stop to pray, or remember the dead for whom the bell tolled. I have been thinking about that often-quoted poem by John Donne:  

No man is an island, 

Entire of itself. 

Each is a piece of the continent, 

A part of the main. 

If a clod be washed away by the sea, 

Europe is the less. 

As well as if a promontory were. 

As well as if a manor of thine own 

Or of thine friend's were. 

Each man's death diminishes me, 

For I am involved in mankind. 

Therefore, send not to know 

For whom the bell tolls, 

It tolls for thee. 

Now, church bells ring out the hours of the clock, and occasionally still ring out mourning and celebration too. They seem also to ring out a quaintness, a nostalgia, a past that is slipping away. I have been sitting by the old stone church listening to them, wondering what else they might be tolling for, what else might be slipping away. In Donne’s poem, he says the bell tolls not for them, but for us, because we are all connected. Each person’s death diminishes the whole from which they were a part, and so diminishes me. The bells used to remind us of that whole.  

The bell could be melancholy but I notice how it tilts me toward hope, even in this deep winter stillness; an audible distillation of light ringing through the dimness. I think it is the hope of mankind which Donne tells me I am involved in. These old bells seem to ring defiantly despite the many other chimes that ring just for me: digital pings, messages, notifications, news, an algorithm that tried to force me down my own lone path. But echoes of communal life persist. Now, I hear the bell say:  

Ding: listen 

Dong: lift your head 

Ding: look  

Dong: life is a whole  

Ding: face each other  

Dong: this is the only way we will meet the future 

A few days later, my daughter and I step into the village hall. We surface together from evening darkness into the light of song: it is the carol concert, we are late, and the music is about to start. The singers are decked in lights and earthy greens and rusty reds. They are a group from Exmoor who conserve and share traditional and local songs, as well as singing the songs we all recognise. My daughter’s cheeks are pink, her eyes blaze with delight. In a few days, the solstice will be here, and the earth will pause in its movement before turning back to face the light. Here in this old hall, the songs seem to reach towards that coming light: we are here, we are together, and we choose to lift our individual voices as one chorus of community.  

I think about the people in this hall gathering to mark other things — memories, celebrations, vision, care — and I wonder about the more figurative bells that draw them together to do so. What are the bells that keep us together now, when so much encourages us into isolation and individualism? — The bells that remind us we can never be the islands that we are so often encouraged to be: independent, tough, believing consumption will heal us, packaged into a personal brand; everything encouraging us to be seen, not known.  

I try to listen for these bells, to hear how to inhabit time reverently and with reciprocity, not with urgency and isolation. In many places the actual church bells are silent, but I think we still need the bells of communality: bells that call us into share rhythms, reminding us to pause in our individual movement, reminding us to gather, to mourn, to remember things and find the light and the hope in each other, just as the tilting of the earth pauses at the solstice before it turns to face the light.  

Nature’s cycle is one way of doing this: tuning in to the turn of the year that makes new life possible. The solstice and equinox; wassailing in January to bless the apple trees; noticing when migrating birds appear or leave; sharing planting and harvesting days. Liturgical calendars are a way that Christian communities kept and still keep time: advent, Christmas, lent, Easter. These rhythms become familiar, reminding us that time isn’t linear, much as the myth of infinite progress would have us believe otherwise. Time is cyclical, expanding and contracting; old events revisited regularly in new ways.  

Knowing that it is not just me looking at these stars, but people across the world and through time, brings me into a peace, a reverence that can be hard to come by.

And there are other things that can bring us together too: causes, hobbies, interests, protests. These can take on the role of bells perhaps, drawing us together around shared purpose – but shared purpose and shared existence, shared being, are not always the same thing.  

Perhaps we need new rhythms if we are to meet the world as it is today. Imagine if a bell tolled — literally or figuratively — not just for human funerals, but whenever a species went extinct, or a tree cut down. Imagine if neighbourhoods gathered to light candles and share stories and soul and care each week, offering a space that church used to provide to lots of people through the ages. And what if we resurrected old traditions for a new age: ‘beating the bounds’ as a way to mark not just the boundaries of land but the places that need restoring and regenerating now; harvest festivals not just as something for school children and rural churches, but as a way we can better connect with food and farming. What if we looked at old wisdom; the way the church calendar aligned with the farming calendar, asking us to remember that food and the soil it comes from are sacred things.  

Our friends were near the beach in Costa Rica. They noticed that at the end of the day, everyone stopped what they were doing — fishing, fixing, working — and watched the sunset. This moment of beauty seemed to bring people together into synchronicity. In his book Awe: The Transformative Power of Everyday Wonder, scientist Dacher Keltner shows us how experiencing awe can, amongst other things, help us to experience humanity, see patterns in life, and better collaborate with each other. He says: “The last pillar of the default self—striving for competitive advantage, registered in a stinginess toward giving away possessions and time—crumbles during awe. Awe awakens the better angels of our nature.” Perhaps putting ourselves in the way of awe might help us hear the bells — old and new — that ring in this current age, and that might bring us together and love each other well. If love only exists in relationship, and love is what helps us to see and to care, then protecting and restoring relationship seems to be vital work for our time.   

Now, the winter sky is dark and the stars shine brightly above. They shine with a clarity that matches the peal of the bells in the village. They call me beyond myself into something unified, something older, something necessary. They call me into wonder and awe. Knowing that it is not just me looking at these stars, but people across the world and through time, brings me into a peace, a reverence that can be hard to come by. I step back into the house but my mind faces outwards into the world.  

Church bells used to call people together to worship, bringing a sense of shared time and purpose. They still ring, but they can be hard to hear against the noise of individual time. I think they are calling us together again now. And if we can’t hear them, perhaps we need to set new bells ringing. May the bells that ring this New Year’s Day inspire us to do so. 

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