Is a church temple mosque or other place of worship a CONDUIT or an OBSTACLE to GOD? What makes you think that?

I'd think for most people it is a conduit, because it provides a peaceful haven dedicated to that one cause.

Yes, a lot of places of worship now are also used for concerts etc. (though usually of sacred music or at least music by composers who wrote much that was), but their central role remains.

Also you could argue the fine art, sculpting etc., in the great Anglican and Catholic cathedrals distracts from contemplation of worship, but I have not heard any such complaints in modern times. They are still places of daily worship as much as the simplest village church; and in many parts of the world, still in that use unbroken except perhaps in times of war or major building alterations, for many hundreds of years. That sense of great age probably helps too, not because it's somehow "antique" and "quaint" like some third-rate tourist brochure, but through the sense of communal continuity.

There have been various iconoclastic or breakaway upheavals throughout history, and some of the Protestant sects established right from the start that their chapels would be very plain, not exhibitions of the arts and crafts. Whilst the notion of distraction was the main and stated reason, I think there was a social as well as theological element to that decision.


I rarely go to church, and then usually for funerals. I am not even a believer! However, last year I attended by invitation, the Ordination of a friend as an Anglican Deacon. Though this was a highly ceremonial occasion lasting an hour and half (partly because there were eight ordinees) in the grandeur of a cathedral, it was still very much a religious service. 

There was a sign of the times though... Communion was offered, and due to the size of the invited congregation, from three separate stations... with the bread at one being gluten-free!

*****

Even I once felt, and very strongly, that sense of agelessness with physical building age, not in that cathedral but in a tiny 13C village church in a French Pyrennean village. There was one detail that did it, and it was not the obvious look of age, nor the white-on-brown tourist-attraction sign on the road outside.  It was the condition of some decorative stone balls, perhaps tennis size, around the plinth of a column in the transept,  like the marzipan balls on an Easter Simnel cake.

Most had kept over the following 700 years the lovely, natural, matt buff colour of the local limestone used for most of the building, but those facing across the church were black and glossy.

I was puzzled at first, not knowing much about Catholic services, then realised from their position in front of the sanctuary steps that they'd been used as hand-holds by worshippers, many of the older ones no doubt finding the movement physically awkward, kneeling for Communion.  They'd not been blackened and burnished on purpose, but naturally and simply by the thin perspiration and slight friction of so many hands taking part in much the same service at least weekly over perhaps 30 generations since the church was built.  

My girlfriend of the time wrote in the Visitors' Book, the single word "Peace".