What is it about?
The article takes a particular school chapel as a starting point for exploring how a theology of space can free us from certain unhelpful categories, norms and hierarchies that find increasing purchase in our institutions and in our politics. Space offers a "supra-cultural perspective" which has tended recently to be overlooked on account of postmodern predilictions for the local, the particular, the fragment. The article examines the strengths and weaknesses of various theologies of place and their relationship with a largely vanquished or forgotten notion of space. Space - it is recognised - can never be experienced directly. The article identifies space with the scriptural Sinai - a liminal, testing zone through which one is called to journey. It becomes a matter of faith: an endless call into openness, silence, mystery. The essay goes on to consider how theological space might be articulated architecturally - not in grand, fixed statements like cathedrals, but in the unnoticeable, the quotidian, the fleeting. Like the chapel - with its carpet tiles and dusty dormer windows - in which the schoolchild takes shelter from punitive place. And in conclusion, it is suggested that the space of the school chapel, the Sinai space, is to be encountered as the mystery encountered behind all experience, as the ground of all experience.
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Why is it important?
To counter the current crop of 'theologies of place', this article proposes a theological reconsideration of space. It characterises the 'theology of place' as being prone to volkisch, clannish and sectarian tendencies, as verging sometimes dangerously close to idolatry. Space, on the other hand, offers something universal and maximally capacious, something which the article tentatively identifies with the borderless Kingdom of Heaven. In an age where political and cultural and linguistic borders, boundaries and divisions are increasingly policed and defended, I believe it is vitally important to resucitate ideas of catholicity and unity.
Perspectives
This article began life as a theological reflection on a painful experience in my childhood. But it quickly grew into a general exploration of how notions of place can quite quickly becoming notions of belonging. And belonging - while seemingly innocent, benign even - can turn toxic: place becomes placedness, a situation in which you are urged to 'know your place;' it mandates a pecking order, a hierarchy. While I recognise the importance and value of theologies of place, and of the current publishing trend for site-specific reflections on nature and culture, I remain suspicious, alert for localism, for territorialism and boundaries.
Revd. Dr. Colin Heber-Percy
Ripon College Cuddesdon
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Exploring the Spirituality of a School Chapel: Space, Silence and the Self, Spiritus A Journal of Christian Spirituality, January 2016, Project Muse,
DOI: 10.1353/scs.2016.0026.
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