Years ago, in the heart of one of the world's greatest cities, there was a building that was used by Baptist Christians. I could have found that out by research, but the actual reason that I know is that I went there.
It was not a building that was especially encouraging. It looked and smelled as though the maintenance level was determined by the needs of the budget more than the needs of the premises. Nevertheless it represented the Great Baptist Headquarters and it was in Central London. (To be technical it is not in London at all but in Holborn aka London Borough of Camden - the Free Churches have always been and remain almost entirely outside the City of London).
The Grand Vision that bequeathed the building to the current generations of British Baptists was that of early 20th Century Free Churchmanship, the same sense of Grand Vision that bequeathed a beautiful Edwardian church in Muswell Hill where I serve - complete with its galleries that imitate the old Langham Hall where the Promenade Concerts first began.
No Baptist congregation today would build such a chapel, and neither would the Baptist Union of today build the building in Southampton Row. And so, in 1989, the building was sold. Today it is a hotel. Yet these old buildings are hugely instructive and symbolic and Baptist House is the more so for having been sold.
Here's the outside:
Yes, that's right. A statue.
It is not very easy to understand a statue on Baptist House. Baptists, after all, have scant love of statues and even at the height of ecumenism (the movement that blurred some lines between denominations in the hope of a visible unity) Baptists rarely had much positivity toward statuary.
Given the Biblicist nature of Baptists we might have expected a Biblical figure - John the Baptist perhaps? Instead, leaving Biblical figures to the Catholics and High Anglicans the Biblical Baptists resorted to congregationalist John Bunyan. He was probably, but not certainly, a Baptist too. And famous. But quite what a passer by is supposed to do with him remains a mystery. Surely not a slight bow? Not a garland on a saints day? What, then?
Anyhow, fascinatingly the renovation of the building to an upscale hotel included bringing the statue into pristine condition, such as had not been seen since, perhaps, about 1905/6 as the London grime took hold.
Statues, you see, pose no threat. Whereas the real John Bunyan was put in gaol, his statue can be secularly renovated without fear that it will ever do harm. That's why we need living faith and not stonework.
The Grand Vision that bequeathed the building to the current generations of British Baptists was that of early 20th Century Free Churchmanship, the same sense of Grand Vision that bequeathed a beautiful Edwardian church in Muswell Hill where I serve - complete with its galleries that imitate the old Langham Hall where the Promenade Concerts first began.
No Baptist congregation today would build such a chapel, and neither would the Baptist Union of today build the building in Southampton Row. And so, in 1989, the building was sold. Today it is a hotel. Yet these old buildings are hugely instructive and symbolic and Baptist House is the more so for having been sold.
Here's the outside:
Yes, that's right. A statue.
It is not very easy to understand a statue on Baptist House. Baptists, after all, have scant love of statues and even at the height of ecumenism (the movement that blurred some lines between denominations in the hope of a visible unity) Baptists rarely had much positivity toward statuary.
Given the Biblicist nature of Baptists we might have expected a Biblical figure - John the Baptist perhaps? Instead, leaving Biblical figures to the Catholics and High Anglicans the Biblical Baptists resorted to congregationalist John Bunyan. He was probably, but not certainly, a Baptist too. And famous. But quite what a passer by is supposed to do with him remains a mystery. Surely not a slight bow? Not a garland on a saints day? What, then?
Anyhow, fascinatingly the renovation of the building to an upscale hotel included bringing the statue into pristine condition, such as had not been seen since, perhaps, about 1905/6 as the London grime took hold.
Statues, you see, pose no threat. Whereas the real John Bunyan was put in gaol, his statue can be secularly renovated without fear that it will ever do harm. That's why we need living faith and not stonework.
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