Cathedrals in fashion

I intended to begin this week’s column on a lighter note, thinking the matter of bikinis and church ended, after reading the news report on Anglican Bishop Claude Berkley’s apology to the members of the church and the public.

My intention was not to rehash the matter, but simply discuss it in a light-hearted manner while offering some ways of thinking about sacred spaces. Mercifully I was spared what might have seemed callous, since I was late with my submission, and I managed to read the more recent headlines Ye Hypocrites and Cathedral Just a Tool.

A friend remarked, in response to the promoter’s argument about women’s bodies, "But he is right to say that it is hypocrisy, since bareback men are meant to entice women. Women on the other hand, cannot go topless and therefore the bottom half is what gets more exposure. So, why don’t we talk about the men?"

I disagreed. Not with the observation, but with the judgment. I found the use of the gender argument in the cathedral case weak and defensive, convenient and out of place.

As much as I support pushing boundaries and challenging the status quo, I strongly believe that there is a place for that and a particular way in which this should be done. The bikini cathedral affair was literal. Nothing metaphorical about it. This was a fashion show. In a cathedral, a place of worship. It was offensive. End of story.

The gender argument I shall deal with at another time. Religion is my main concern here, because the religious space is a cultural space, a place where social identities are articulated. Think of attending temples, mosques, churches. The congregation dresses and behaves in a way that conforms to the space. There are particular material objects used in worship. For some it is a book, for others, incense, bells, gongs and so on. Within this space, although each individual may experience the space differently, there is still a unity under one ceiling.

Place, let’s say our home, represents time. It contains memories. When parents die, for children it remains a space that holds the memories of the family. Most times it is kept in the family as a reminder of a time that has passed. Yet the memories remain alive when we tell stories of this room or that vase in the living room.

"The sacred" and I would like to quote here "must be maintained or preserved as a material presence in this world of time and space. Therefore, special measures are necessary to delineate something as not to be profaned or lost to deterioration or confusion with other things. Preserving the sacred often means treating it properly. Respect and veneration keep the sacred in place.” (David Morgan, The Material Culture of Lived Religions: Visuality and Embodiment: materialreligions.blogspot.com)

I consider this important because I see the religious space as a place which, in the imagination of the congregation, or anyone for that matter, functions as a place of refuge. It is associated in people’s minds with hope, healing, peace, quiet.

The fashion show appeared incongruous in this space. The photographs were jarring.

But this may simply be my conservative view, and by all means, the church has the right to appropriate its space as it sees fit.

In my own mind and in my own tradition, worship is both an imaginative and intellectual act, and the same for all traditions, when we look closely. And in a material world, the material object that is the building and all its items gives a tangible form to the image in our heads.

There is a vibration within a church that is not tangible but imagined, and this is powerful. The architecture, the altar, the objects of worship, the linearity of pews, all serve to move the worshipper into a different frame of mind.

The word "frame" is important here, because this is exactly what we do when we look into the world. We frame it, based on our upbringing and our experiences. And so the sacred is one such frame, where the physical space that is the church embodies a particular narrative.

The Anglican church has been one of the more open-minded bodies on many social issues.

But here, I believe, there has been a violation of trust. Sacred spaces necessitate boundaries by their virtue of being sacred spaces, places of pilgrimage. To challenge that boundary in the name of progress, is destructive, in a negative sense, for to do so is to push the space into the carnival on the road and destroy, for many people, the peace and hope that their place of worship represents. Which other space offers such refuge in the imagination of the worshipper?