/christian/ - Christian Discussion and Fellowship

>>834980

> There is a group of suits who decides where to place churches and of what size.

>Roman Catholic sacred architecture also endorses the use of imagery.

exactly the type of stereotyping you tell me not to do. The Vatican is not deciding where every single one of the million of Catholic Churches goes. Instead, local people approach a dioceses in an autonomous fashion and ask for permission. You've had Marian apparitions where Mary ask for a specific church be built, and the person inclines and builds. it.

>>834982

You're not contradicting anything I said

Do you just take offense at "suits"?

You just said that people ask for permission from the ecclesiastical system for churches, who make the decisions and allocate the resources. When did I say Vatican?

Why are you so upset?

Part of the reason I converted to Orthodoxy is precisely what OP said. God deserves out best and nothing less. The best architecture, the best art, the best music mankind can make. I think the aesthetic differences (apostolic vs protestant) branch from theological differences. In my time as a protestant I observed that many (almost all) of the protestant denominations I visited and studied had a very odd view of God as nothing more than a communal imaginary friend. Sermons would often focus on how much God loves us exactly the way we are. I remember thinking this was ridiculous, if God loves us exactly the way we are, why does he command us to be better? The apostolic churches differ greatly in that they are much more penitent and conscious of their sins. They teach with much more emphasis that we are all sinners and God does not want us to simply continue in our sins but actively resist them. In essence the protestants seem to think that God will simply fix everything for us because he just loves us so much while the apostolics believe that God demands greater from us, that he will not simply fix us with his love but that we must make a concerted effort to better ourselves in order to serve him. The protestant god requires nothing from us while the apostolic God requires all we have. Thus the protestant places of worship are crude unadorned shacks, their art is cartoonish if not non-existent, and their music is radio hit trash while apostolics build grand cathedrals, make beautiful statues and icons, and sing complex grandiose music.

>>834984

>God loves us exactly the way we are.

The churches you visited were in the extreme minority

>>834983

Catholic is autonomous too, usually a local figure ask for permission. I wouldn't say the suits "decide" although they ultimately accept or not. I can think of a lot of Catholics who built churches some scratch, so even "asking the local cleric" is an afterthought.

>>834988

Local catholic churches are not autonomous.

If churches are humbly built by locals sometimes how does that argue your point in the OP?

>>834989

they are built autnomus. There is big and small catholic churches, but they are all ornate.

>>835004

Autonomy doesn't have anything to do with the physical building

>>835009

I mean "autonom" insofar that it's driven by laity, not necessary the bishops

I like my 100 year old brick Catholic Church.

I'd rather have the bowling ally back rather than the "protestant" church that it's turned into.

Close by to my Church is an even grander Catholic Church with a school and rectory. The Novus ordo controls that one, and they're going to demolish it because they don't want to spend the money to fix it up.

The local baptist church is your basic stick barn. Given my enlightenment about Baptist that I have received from this board, this seems strangely appropriate

>>834987

Even among orthodox they are the majority.

It's just the way of the world.

>>835042

to be fair, OP specified a specific Protestant polemic against Catholicism. He didn't say all protestants agreed and/or conformed to that polemic. Just gave it an intellectual rebuttal.

>>835052

You have to understand the history and economics of why the old Church, before the reformation, went on a cathedral building binge. it not only helped the economies, the people would see these grand churches and be in awe of God's house. It helped to build faith among the people.

No one does that now, because of the (((Harvard))) MBA.

My old church needs renovations because they used Portland cement based mortar instead of Roman Cement. Our parish can hardly afford this.

>>835042

Just providing a counterpoint

There are no Baptist cathedrals because there are no dioceses in Baptist ecclesiology

There's churches, seminaries, colleges, missions boards, association or convention buildings, etc

>>835054

>it not only helped the economies

Citation?

>>835060

>Citation?

Macro econ 101. Same reason why the Egyptians built pyramids, the Chinese are building ghost cities and why FDR tried his various unconstitutional work programs.

I don't care to explain or research for you, but it's a real thing; such work programs increases demand for labor and puts money in the hands of the people, who then increase demand for goods. Feel free to dismiss it as that.

>>835066

You're anachronistically supposing Keynesian economics back onto the intent of ancient and medieval architecture

It did not build economies and it was not a stated objective. You don't help peasant Christians by taking their money and sending it to Rome.

>>835068

>It did not build economies and it was not a stated objective.

There are a lot of things Catholics do that men don't know are beneficial, but obviously God did. That's the divine hand. Catholicism requires that the faithful learn discipline, to resist sin and self gratification, to learn to think about God several times a day, to be honest in all things, to treat our employees fair and to do honest hard work for our employers, to have solid families with out divorce…

These things were the gifts of the Holy Ghost upon the Lord's church. No way did humans understand them at the time, or how the human brain worked.

You seem to be upset that the Holy Mother Church has received the graces of God that were often rejected by our Protestant brothers.

>>835087

You made a very pointed claim and now you are entirely dodging the issue while committing ad hominem.

Another hopeful chance for interfaith discussion proving to be a waste of time

Good day

Sage

>>835091

here you go, friend.

https://www.ehs.org.uk/dotAsset/58d96eae-c3a8-456c-adab-46e6dbb7a07b.pdf

>>835112

Did you just google "cathedral" and "economy"?

This doesn't support the point

It says

>The idea is that church building can be seen as an index of economic activity

Not

>the building of cathedrals helped the economies

or even "intended to"

>>835115

did you read the conclusions of the paper or just the first paragraph?

Another hopeful chance for interfaith discussion proving to be a waste of time

Good day

Sage

>>835116

Quote me from the paper what I'm overlooking

>>835120

>Construction of each church was, of course, the expression of many impulses: religious, political, artistic, and cultural. Construction work was normally sustained over periods of years and decades and hence was a manifestation of confidence, if not faith, in the future based on an optimistic assessment of the future income streams required to bring such ambitious projects to completion. All required enterprise, planning and organisation of a high order, high inputs of capital and labour (both skilled and unskilled), and assemblage of impressive quantities of resources — stone, brick, lime and sand, timber, iron, lead, copper, glass and much else. Each major project was an intrinsically economic undertaking and could have considerable multiplier effects for the wider economy.

Building Churches alighned with periods of growth

>The first impression conveyed by Figure 7 is that there was indeed a big boom in church construction in the High Middle Ages – between 1000 and 1300 building activity grew spectacularly from low levels (about 20,000 m2

decade

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JU

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per period of twenty years) to six times that level at the peak of the 1220s/30s. The Carolingian Renaissance clearly shows up in the estimates: between the 780s and 860s the level of activity is higher than before and there is a real decline of construction until the first decades of the tenth century. The Ottonian Renaissance (c 950-1000) can also be identified as a period of – still modest – growth. However, the real break occurs around the year 1000, when church building suddenly surged. This growth spurt is well- known from the literature. At the time, the monk Glaber, working in Dijon and Cluny, commented that ‘on the threshold of the aforesaid thousandth year’ every nation of Christendom was rivalling with other nations in building new churches,

With the boom around the year 1000 the ‘big wave’ of the High Middle Ages starts, which continues, with

some ups and downs, until the 1220s (when the absolute peak in construction activity occurs), or until the 1280s, as until the end of the thirteenth century activity levels remained very high. But from the 1280/90s – half a century before Black Death - a strong decline sets in, consistent with Campbell’s (2016) findings for Britain (and the international economy), which lasts until the 1360s. After the shock of the Black Death has been ‘digested’, a strong recovery began, which brought output levels back to almost those of the best years of the thirteenth century. However, as we will see below, this recovery after the 1360s was very unequally spread over the study area.

Page 20 = Correlation between building churches and gdp

Pages 24-26 =building churches drives economic and technological growth

From page 28

>Finally, what do these estimates tell us if we see them as powerfully influenced by economic forces? The Carolingian Renaissance is from that perspective not a surprise, but the new data allow us to put this into perspective – and perhaps learn that both the Northern Netherlands and England were outside the scope of that building cycle. The sudden acceleration at about 1000 (or after 1066 in the case of England) probably owed more linked to religions, institutional and political forces, as argued already, than to a sudden dramatic expansion of the economies involved. Indeed, England’s new Norman masters used church building to demonstrate their power and seal their takeover of both Church and state. On the other hand, the large-scale building projects starting at about 1000 must have been financed from growing surpluses, and have had their impact on the real economy.

from page 29

>

Figure 20 presents the average of each century’s built volume of churches (in 1000s m3) per city for the whole of the study area, plotted by the end year of each century. It shows that before 1000 cities close to the sea did not develop more favourably than others – perhaps the Vikings contributed to the poor performance of such cities, or agricultural changes were driving the process. This changed after 1000: the boom in church building in the eleventh century was mainly to be found in the river and sea cities in our sample, and not to that same extent in the landlocked cities. After 1300, as maritime technology advanced, cities close to the sea also began to out- perform those on rivers, whereas landlocked cities appear to have stagnated from the 13th century onwards. The strong link with river and sea trade which is implied by this comparison, suggests that commercial opportunities were a prominent component of Western Europe’s great church building boom.

>>835122

causation fallacy

>>835124

The paper states clearly that not only did cathedral building drive innovation, but it had a real (positive) impact on the economy, It’s right there, you have no argument.

>>835125

we are really getting in the weeds here

Am I blind? I do not see it.

I see impact: "must have been financed from growing surpluses, and have had their impact on the real economy. "

>>835129

>Am I blind? I do not see it.

you probably have poor reading comprehensions. Did you graduate college?

>>835130

If you're going to sneak an insult do it with proper grammar

>>835131

it's not an insult, it's sincere. Are you open to the possibility you have poor reading compression and that's why you can't see it, despite it being spelled out in front of your face? Even the fact that you wanted me to spoonfeed you a 30 page paper is a red flag. As for the "collage" remark, I'm trying to get to the bottom of the mystery myself.

>>835132

I don't believe you, and I know you don't either. You were being snarky. I'm not going to pretend that I'm offended but it's not nice, some people who post here might really have confidence issues about their intelligence.

This is a rabbit trail worth giving up on anyway. The poster who made the claim didn't have any basis for it, this one is legitimate but it's not explicitly making an objective of our topic.

>>835148

I would that to anyone who's insecure about their intelligence should think twice before making bold theological pronunciations.

"Check yourself before you wreck yourself" - Ice Cube