SHORT of praying for an arsonist, what do you do with a church full of empty seats?
We have not always had pews, and we certainly have not always met facing the front. At the Reformation, Calvinists did not want to observe a distant ritual around the east-end altar of a rectangular building. They wanted to celebrate the centrality of word and sacrament. When they took possession of ancient Roman Catholic buildings, they placed the pulpit and a domestic table in the centre of the long wall. Around these furnishings the congregation stood, squatted or sat on stools, pews being a later embellishment Few of the pre-reformation churches remain intact in Scotland – most of our existing buildings were erected in the nineteenth century. But here and there one can find older T-shaped churches where congregations assembled to the left, right and in front of the pulpit and table.
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