By Kirk Petersen Imagine the scene: You’re the Rev. Steven Rice, rector of St. Timothy’s Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. In the midst of the pandemic, you’re overseeing a long-scheduled, $2.5 million renovation and expansion of the church, while holding fast to the faith that parishioners will return someday. You’re terrified of heights, yet there you are in a … [Read more...] about A Refuge of Beauty: St. Timothy’s, Winston-Salem
beauty
The Art of Reconciliation
The Parish of Calvary–St. George’s has welcomed a theater company called Sea Dog, which seeks to “tell stories of alienation and reconciliation.” Plays are staged in the church, and Sea Dog hosts meals with wine for the cast, crew, and audience afterward. Sea Dog’s first production, Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, won Outstanding Revival of a Play at the 2018 New York … [Read more...] about The Art of Reconciliation
Reveling in Hope
By Wesley Hill A few weeks after a Lutheran theologian joined the faculty of the evangelical Anglican seminary where I teach, he said something to me about his experience of daily chapel that lingers in my memory. “It’s strange not to be singing the liturgy,” he said. “The words have a different quality somehow when they’re said rather than sung.” “[N]obody sings like … [Read more...] about Reveling in Hope
The Long Work of Rebuilding
Patrick Sisson reports for Curbed: “It’s okay to cry,” said Jorge Otero-Pailos. As news spread of the tragic fire that consumed the roof of Notre Dame cathedral, a national, spiritual, and architectural symbol with few parallels, Otero-Pailos, director of the preservation program at Columbia University, was still taking in the enormity of what had been lost. But with hundreds … [Read more...] about The Long Work of Rebuilding
Easter to Whitsun with Thomas Noyes-Lewis
By Richard J. Mammana A stream of the Church of England’s artistic self-image in the first half of the 20th century reflected the genius of one man: Thomas Noyes-Lewis (1863-1946). The bulk of his work was ephemeral, but it was nevertheless extensive. Postcards, children’s books, cigarette cards, baptism certificates, stained glass, Stations of the Cross, Sunday school … [Read more...] about Easter to Whitsun with Thomas Noyes-Lewis
Incarnational Stations
By Dennis Raverty The Stations of the Cross at the Anglo-Catholic Church of St. John’s in the Village in New York City were written for that church by Greek Orthodox icon painter Christopher Kosmas in the late 1970s and were installed in 1982. The artist modified the traditional stations by combining them with Eastern iconography in a hybrid, amounting to a Greek Orthodox … [Read more...] about Incarnational Stations
Research on Evensong Numbers
Cathedral services of choral Evensong in England appear to be burgeoning. Now a research project launched in Oxford is set to try to find out why. While church attendance is declining generally, that is not so for cathedral attendance, especially at Christmas. The research project to be led by musicologist Kathryn King of Magdalen College, Oxford, will study what people … [Read more...] about Research on Evensong Numbers
God and the Architect
By Duo Dickinson When we think of religion and architecture, it is easy to have visions of churches: ascending forms, focused and spiritually evocative spaces, perfect settings for icons and rituals. But architecture starts with architects. Architecture is the self-designated Mother of the Arts because it combines all aesthetics in one built effort. When architecture’s … [Read more...] about God and the Architect