Ship of Fools: St Barnabas, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

The Mystery Worshipper

Ship of Fools: St Barnabas, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

Lovely service, ugly wallpaper – and what was with that server?

Read the full Mystery Worshipper report here

boston_irish

Would the statue be Saint Barnabas? ISTM that the design pattern of the wallpaper looks like grapes and wheat which would make sense. I enlarged it but still couldn’t get a clear picture. Regardless, the drab colors get lost among all that beautiful wood.

Box Pew

I love the curved laminated trusses that hold up the roof. Completely of their time, but just a little suggestive of the gothic arch. The Rood, whilst a fine in itself, does indeed look out of place—as though moved here from an older church. Maybe it was...

Amanda B Reckondwyth

Roods of that style always make me think of a circus trapeze.

angloid

This report makes an interesting comparison with the recent one on St Paul's Bow Common. Although both belong to a similar tradition within Anglicanism, St Paul's is a holistic expression of architecture serving the liturgy, whereas this church looks as if the liturgy is uncomfortably squatting in an unsuitable building. Canadian and not English, but it suggests Anglican fudge, which is no doubt the reason for Ian Nairn's comment that churches like Bow Common are so rare in England compared to mainland Europe. It looks like the imposition of a familiar (and doubtless well-loved) liturgical tradition on a mediocre building that doesn't have the courage to be either properly modern or a loving recreation of a former style, rather than going back to the basic principles of liturgy and making the building serve it.

Box Pew

Lets hear it for Anglican fudge! As a young man I disparaged it as indecisive. Now not-so-young I see its wisdom.

Cyprian

What's so strange about the server passing to the east side of the altar?

Where there's a freestanding altar within an apsidal sanctuary, so that one night cross from one side to the other without being too much of a distraction, isn't this what would be expected for non-ceremonial movement?

This is certainly the norm in Orthodox churches of whatever rite. It's only when space or building design constraints place the altar against the eastern wall that passing in front of it becomes an unfortunate necessity.