Bork Yaptist

York Baptist Church is a peculiar-looking nonconformist chapel in that great and venerable northern city. It received a grant a few years back to help pay for its roof repair so large is the space beneath it. The Baptists Together website contains some unusually helpful information about its construction, claiming that it was the city's first chapel to be built in the gothic revival style back in 1867. Gothic is the old medieval fashion for pointed windows and crenelated towers. Close by is Micklegate Bar and the side entrance to St Mary’s Bishophill Junior (which is an old church rather than a primary school), two genuinely medieval gothic structures. Quite why the York Baptists felt the need to built in a medieval manner when their denomination was unknown in the middle ages is something of a mystery. Did they wish to blend into their architectural surroundings? Artistically, I approve of this. Or did they simply wish to engage with the fashions of the time, or to show that they were ‘just as good’ as the Anglicans and Catholics, not scrimping on costs? Had their building been a little cheaper to maintain, they might not have been in receipt of charitable grants 150 years later.

I have heard good things about York Baptist Church and I offer no criticism of its services or leadership here. Yet they have a building which appeared wonderfully ‘in keeping’ and appropriate back in the 1860s, which begs certain questions today. There is a sense in which, theologically and morally, if not architecturally, the church is not to fit in, to conform, to blend into the landscape. Our values are different, our doctrines offensive, our people are in the process of being transformed. Whatever our building, or lack thereof, may we ensure that we are nonconformists in more than the historical sense of the work.

And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Romans 12:2