Sacred Teepees
Dwight Longenecker on Modern Church Architecture
I am lucky. My job as a charity representative means I visit a different Catholic parish every weekend. Traveling around southwest England gives me the chance to indulge one of my favorite hobbies: church snooping. Any church is interesting—even modern preaching halls have a homely silence about them. But I admit I don’t usually aim for the Methodist halls and Baptist chapels. I look out for the old-timers.
Church snooping here in England means pulling up in little villages to explore those humble historic treasures, the ancient parish churches. I never get tired of spotting the tower of a distant village, then pulling off the road, traipsing across the ancient churchyard to see if the door just might be open. Philip Larkin recounted the same gentle obsession in his poem “Church Going”:
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more from the online archives
15.6—July/August 2002
Things Hidden Since the Beginning of the World
The Shape of Divine Providence & Human History by James Hitchcock
31.6—November/December 2018
on the Church's Response to the Anti-marriage Tide by Diane Woerner
29.3—May/June 2016
A Deathbed Reflection on Catholic Social Teaching & Our Future Prospects by Karl D. Stephan
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
Support Touchstone
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
