On the 24th September 2015 I attended The Betjeman Society’s meeting: John Betjeman Saving Churches. Here are some notes from the two presentations by the Churches Conservation Trust & the National Churches Trust.
- John Betjeman enthusiasm and importance for the English parish church.
- Love of the church enthused by a very deep anglican belief.
- Going into a church and being brought to his knees by the beauty of it. A sinful believer. He went into a church for two reasons: appreciate the architecture and what it stood for/ represented/ role of the church in English history and what it stands for.
- Love of Victorian and 18th Century architecture.
- Didn’t like over restoration.
- John Betjeman preservation of English architecture.
- The single most influential voice in the preservation movement.
- Betjeman writings still very relevant in terms of what is happening in the anglican church today: desire to close churches: the burden of the parish church.
- Betjeman and his poetry: his faith wasn’t a private matter he declared his christian faith using: poetry, magazines, television and newspapers.
- Celebrated and social and aesthetic joys of anglicanism.
- The physical and spatial spaces of its churches and joy of its literurgy.
- Role in providing a cultural identity for the British people.
- He made a connection between anglicanism and Englishness.
- 1943 radio address of Nazi invasion memory of his churches. Ideas of Englishness embedded in church imagery. “For me England stands for the Church of England, eccentric incumbents, oil-lit churches, women’s institutes, modest village inns, arguments about cow parsley on the altar”.
- His poems are about faith and the spiritual they are sites of worship not just architecture.
- 1937 essay a spiritual change is one hope for art: a drift towards ugliness and looking back on the last 100 years problems are the increasing population, mass production and the absence of a uniting faith.
- “the machine is discredited god is discredited, human nature is discredited, we are turning ourselves into the material in which slaves are made. time slaves, machine slaves and money slaves.”
- His poetry and his work to preserve churches are about a mourning of lost community in church and embraces a hope that the church will survive.
- Anglican church that survives as it is a communal identity shared by people whether or not you worship or believe.
- Remembering the churches even if they are not there is vital to cultural identity. “community is threatened when the Church is threatened, for the Church is a spirit that breathes life into a society.”
