St Saviour's, Leeds

St Saviour’s Church in Leeds I have never found attractive. Its planned spire never materialised, so its tower appears unnecessarily heavy and squat. Furthermore, its smog-washed walls are black and dirty, lending a rather dark visage. And well might it, for the church was built in the mid-1840s with the expressed intention of instructing Anglo-Catholicism into the parishes. To its credit, its location was selected for its poverty rather than its wealth, unlike many Low or evangelical parishes were located. The Tractarian or Oxford Movement sought to change the Church of England’s direction, steering a course that would dilute the Reformation and return it to a version of medieval worship and theology. The good Bishop of Ripon refused to allow it to be named as the Church of the Holy Cross on account of Roman superstition, but the tide was turning, and the frequent rows between bishop and parish came to nothing; the soul of the Church of England was being horribly torn by Catholicism and later liberalism, and today’s mess is a partial result of that lost conflict.

Unusually for a High Church, it was closed when I called, though I remember going on a tour around it from organised by the university’s Theology Department for a module of Victorian religion. I recall the insides as being rather dark, too, though interesting. Black walls without and a pseudo-papal darkness within; yet, ironically, Anglo-Catholics are something of an antidote to the theological liberalism with has poisoned much of that sprawling denomination.

Judah mourneth, and the gates thereof languish; they are black unto the ground; and the cry of Jerusalem is gone up. Jeremiah 14:2

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