Christianity from the No 43 bus: 6. Temperance and the Tavern

 Continuing a journey through London on the 43 bus route - with a Christian eye.  The whole series is viewable on the '43 bus route' tag below.

Opposite Archway underground station (a previous terminus of the Northern Line) stands what was, until quite recently, Archway Methodist Church.  And nearby - what still is - Archway Tavern.

A penny for every time you have heard some church leader have an epiphany that their church building should no longer look like a church because people don't like that (when what they mean is that they want to change something because - well, - they want to be able to say that they've changed something),

The bad news is - that's old news.

Methodism quite specialised in it and, in addition to churches that looked like churches, they built Central Halls that didn't.  In fact on this very New Years Eve the most famous Central Hall - over the road from Westminster Abbey - will be busy having a lights and music spectacular to welcome in the New Year.  Without a trace of God.

The idea of Central Halls in general and Archway's (the last ever built) in particular was to provide a hub of wholesome activity in town and city centres.  It was a church, but functioned as a 7 day a week activity centre.  But none of the alcohol or general worldliness of the Archway Tavern and its long lost fellow alehouses.

So in the picture and without the wording it would never be thought of as a church.  It had several glorious years of witness in the working-class (as was) buzz of Archway.

It's closed now.  

So its architecture didn't actually save it and the congregation have retreated to a small chapel-looking church not too far away but absolutely not in the centre of Archway life.  

And meanwhile Methodism in England seems intent, in the past ten years particularly, on embracing some of the standards of Archway Tavern as against offering a holier alternative.

We look to a New Year and long for the believers of Britain to, once more, catch the call to be salt and light instead of a tasteless anonymity.