Christians! Why dont most baptist or evangelical churches have beauty anymore?
March 30, 2011 by refl
Filed under Church stained
I attend an evangelical church but I was just wondering, why dont most modern churches have that old time beauty anymore, like stained glass windows and such?
Because religion is a business.
Churches are now looking like office buildings.
Wake up and smell the coffee!
That ain’t where the money is, baby.
stained glass windows cost a lot of money which church’s can not afford
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Too expensive………………and lack of craftsmen who can create it.
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The focus now, to a larger degree, is more so, on the spiritual aspect of worship. I do however, agree with you on the atmosphere created by such things is quite, becoming !
It’s very sad, because my old church in Scotland had these amazing big stained glass windows etc… and it was beautiful, but North American christians don’t seem to make nice old style traditional chrurches. Part of the beauty of worship was the religious atmosphere, now it’s like a hall=(
The baptist church in my town has had the windows broken so many times that it’s cheaper to replace them with regular windows.
Beauty of the spirit is what is important. Do you want to help your parishoners and community or dress yourself and church up into a Trojan Horse? It is a slippery slope to conspicuous consumption, bad taste, greed, and priestcraft. It is true that religion has inspired beautiful artwork. Check out the temples of various religions and you will see beauty in our time.
You just answered your own question they are modernists.
The traditional Christians believe that the Temple of God is to commemorate His divine authority and greatness. In which His Temple is an expression of religious images of beautiful art and filled with songs of praise and glory.
I will go so far as to say that these churches never had any beauty in the first place because they housed people with iconoclastic beliefs. Early Baptists, Quakers, Mennonites, Evangelicals, etc. were so afraid of falling into idolatry that they banned artwork of almost any kind in their churches; some of the more radical groups even abandoned the term “church” in favor of “meeting house” to describe their halls of worship. That is the historical reason why so many of these churches are so plain. As for the reason why modern churches are ugly? One can say that artwork is expensive, but the real reason is that most people have lost a sense of the sacred. Does one go to church to have a mystical encounter with the divine or listen to a few speeches while drinking coffee and munching on snacks? If your church is primarily a cafeteria or lecture hall it will look like one… if it is a house of God it will look like one.
The Catholic church uses the material world as well as the spiritual. We have incense, candles, images, statues, etc. They are all material things designed to stimulate the senses, our material bodies. Many modern churches have very little in the way of Christian art to stimulate the senses. They do not take into account how humans have bodies too. We are not just spirits. The body can be brought into the mysteries of God as well. These material things can help stimulate the senses to bring us into an attitude of prayer for instance.
Incense was used in the old testament by Jews. These things were passed onto early Christians and are still in use today. Sacramentals can prepare us to get in touch with God in the Sacraments.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZMWKsB0QzI