Cathedrals are making a comeback, here’s why

From soft toys to crisis moments, these flagships hold much more than our stories.

David Ison

David was the Dean of St Paul's Cathedral for ten years until retiring in 2022.

A puppet donkey peaks over the edge of a cathedral pulpit

Family carol service, St Paul's Cathedral.

What is it about cathedrals? Under a secular French government, €700 million has been spent on renewing Notre-Dame Cathedral after the 2019 fire disaster. The money hasn’t however come from French taxpayers, but from donations large and small by people in France and from across the world. And the number of people entering cathedrals to visit, or pray, or meet with others keeps going up, even as church attendance declines and religion seems out of fashion – so what’s going on?

Building a large church is a long and very costly process, and Christian communities could take a century or more to build or upgrade a cathedral as resources became available. In lands where Christian faith was embraced by those in power, governments would help to build and endow cathedrals. They were not only central points for worship and church life in their area, but were large covered meeting spaces which were also used by the state for synods, coronations, meetings or services which supported political life and enhanced social cohesion. Communities and rulers wanted to have the best and biggest building they could, to the glory of God (and also that of its builders): and cathedrals were a focus for the best that could be found in architecture and art, sermons in stone and stained glass, colourful high-rise marvels inspiring the inhabitants of an often ugly and dingy low-rise world.

So what explains the enduring attraction of cathedrals, and the emotional bonds between these buildings and us which the rebuilding of Notre Dame has highlighted?

For a start, these buildings are the holders of stories and identities. We humans love a good story. We want to hear, see and tell stories; to make a story out of our own life; to be part of a bigger story which gives us identity and meaning. In cathedrals, I’ve met visitors and pilgrims eager to know the history, in other words the story of such an amazing place and all it contains. There are the visitors writing their own stories who take a picture of their cuddly toy at each tourist destination. And there are the men and women at a crisis point. in their own story who come in search of forgiveness or hope or love, and begin to find it in the great story of God, Jesus and the Christian faith to which a cathedral bears witness.

That holding of identity isn’t only individual, of course. The tragedy of 2019 in Paris was felt across the world, because Notre Dame with its glorious architecture and its treasures is a part of the world’s story with which millions of people have become engaged through their visits and understanding; a tragedy felt of course most deeply in France, where the cathedral is entwined with French history and identity. Each cathedral, whatever its age or size, carries the story of its community and people, is part of our human story, of yours and mine. Their heritage is ours too. The story a cathedral tells about identity, faith and hope can enliven and inspire.

Then again, cathedrals are witnesses. Cathedrals don’t only host state occasions: their role is to be a place for people from a wide geographical and social area to meet and celebrate, worship, mourn, listen and learn. They are places where we are both affirmed and challenged. Whether it’s a local charity concert to help those in need, a major company anniversary, a seminar or a protest venue for people concerned about a hot political, social or religious topic, the mourners of a significant public figure, or a homeless person seeking dignity as well as shelter – cathedrals witness to the value of human life before God. As a cathedral Dean I went from greeting the monarch to talking with Terry the Big Issue seller: for a cathedral, all are beloved by God, and there to be welcomed.
While cathedrals hold story and identity, looking backwards, and witness to and focusing of a local or national community looking around them, you might imagine another axis of attraction as looking forward and upwards, ‘flagships of the Spirit’.

Cathedrals, like all churches, are metaphorical footprints of God in the world: spiritual space set aside to step outside ourselves and our everyday lives, to reflect, to pray and worship, to seek an encounter with the presence of God. When I worked at St Paul’s Cathedral in London, our aim was to enable people in all their diversity to encounter the transforming presence of God in Jesus Christ, whatever that would mean for them; and sometimes we succeeded. A survey of visitors entering cathedrals found that only 10 per cent of them were intending to do something spiritual; but when they came out, 40 per cent of them had prayed, lit a candle, spoken with a priest or gone to worship.

The authorities in Paris are expecting their visitor numbers to go up to 15 million a year after re-opening. Even Donald Trump and Elon Musk were in Notre Dame. Next time you're near a cathedral, why not go and explore the story?'

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Article

Creed

Redemption

Trauma

5 July 2023

4 min read

The healing power of forgiveness

From Parliamentary Prayer Breakfasts to post-apartheid South Africa and fourth-century desert monks, Julie Canlis explores the benefits of relentlessly pursuing forgiveness.

Julie Canlis

Julie connects Christian spirituality with ordinary life in Wenatchee, Washington State, where she teaches and writes.

Eastern Orthodox icon depict the Prodigal Son displayed on Forgiveness Sunday

Last week, the National Parliamentary Prayer Breakfast convened with a focus on the power of the F-word in public life. In our cultural moment, we prefer score settling and retribution to what was once a cherished value: Forgiveness. Can the Christian story offer anything to an era which is caught in endless cycles of violence, conflict, injustice, and vengeance?

In our lifetime, we have seen the experiment of what happens when a whole country dedicates itself to forgiveness. In South Africa, overcoming the trauma of apartheid did not mean forgetting but choosing to remember collectively. Evil was named. But could this kind of truth set one free? There were no shortcuts to forgiveness. There was no quick wiping the slate clean that avoided the truth. Instead, perpetrators were faced with real people and stories of what they had done. Victims recounted their trauma, but in a new way that enabled them to stop being the victim of what had happened to them. In South Africa, forgiveness was not religiously sanctioned denial. It offered the victims agency, and release from the cycle of vengeance.

From South Africa, we learned the power in sharing trauma stories. We discovered the importance of looking for underlying causes and ideologies that are contributing factors. But that was not the end. We also watched the power of restorative narratives, testifying to the beautiful fragility and hope of reconciliation. Without forgiveness, no relationship on a personal or national scale can be sustained. What would it look like to begin to create a forgiveness culture amid a culture of hate?

In the fourth century, there were communities of Christians who fled the Roman empire and set up shop in the desert. They gave their life to prayer and forgiveness because they found that despite fleeing from the “sins” of Rome, they could not escape themselves. They were in the desert with a handful of other people, and yet their hearts still contained hatred. They did not have muscle memory oriented toward forgiveness.

For others, hearing that they are forgiven forty times finally cracks through a self-defeating wall.

And so, they relentlessly practiced forgiveness. They practiced it by stopping the incessant outward glance at other peoples’ faults. They asked forgiveness constantly, in a bold attempt to own their own culpability and blindness. And they ritualized this practice in a once-yearly “Forgiveness Sunday” which makes many of us squirm just to think of it. The Sunday before Lent, everyone in the community would extend a word of forgiveness to each person, and beg their forgiveness in turn.

Forgiveness Sunday is still practiced annually in Eastern Christian churches (often Greek or Russian) where you can still wander in on the Sunday before Lent, and work on your F-word muscle memory. In case you find yourself in one of these churches, the script goes something like this:

Person 1: Forgive me, sister.

Person 2: God forgives you. And so do I. Forgive me brother.

Person 1: God forgives you. And I forgive you.

Of course, this exchange can be rote. But for some for whom there has been anything amiss, eyes well up with tears. Perhaps it is the letting go of an exhausting grudge. For others, hearing that they are forgiven forty times finally cracks through a self-defeating wall. And for everyone, it is a commitment to not constantly ruminate on the wrongs of others, reliving incidents to keep the anger going. If done rightly, it allows for the recognition of wrong, while not allowing it to perpetuate itself in you. In essence, it is the cheapest mental health shortcut, available at a church near you.

Back in the fourth century, Forgiveness Sunday arose as a circumstantial necessity because these desert dwellers would retreat even further into the desert for Lent. Call it a detox camp. Call it a therapeutic immersion. Call it a technology fast. Regardless, due to the dangers of the desert (wild animals and a hostile environment), these Christians wanted to receive the forgiveness of their brothers and sisters (and offer it) in case they did not return to the community to celebrate Easter. For us, a modern equivalent might be simply to enter the liturgical time of confession and forgiveness on a regular Sunday. And to lean more deeply into the well-worn phrase to “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who have trespassed against us.” Would it be possible to treat these words with a whole new level of personal responsibility and vulnerability?

Forgiveness Sunday is the humble declaration that we are both victims and perpetrators.

Forgiveness, when taken seriously, is a process that takes time. Forgiveness involves great courage, but also the great humble realisation that we could have just as easily done the very act that needed forgiving, under different circumstances. Forgiveness involves neither appeasement nor grovelling. For the church, the ritualised understanding of Forgiveness Sunday is the humble declaration that we are both victims and perpetrators. And that, somehow, Christ accompanies us in the grief of both.

In the Christian tradition, Jesus founded his new order upon forgiveness. Jesus knew that the unforgiving heart is closed to not just giving forgiveness but to receiving it – it is sealed up like a tomb. That those who are least forgiving also live daily with the fiercest critic – themselves. In other sayings, Jesus highlights that forgiveness is not merely an interior disposition, but also one honours the integrity of the process of working through an injury. And finally, Christians believe that Jesus practiced what he preached: he forgave his enemies (and died for them) to secure divine forgiveness for everyone. For his followers, they had no choice but to forgive – and many of them ended up founding communities of forgiveness.