Articles
Posted on Tue 15 September 2026
Britain must save its irreplaceable sacred spaces - The Telegraph September 2026
The Church of Scotland has announced that the 800-year-old Brechin Cathedral has been handed over to a local civic trust which will now organise events and programmes in it that the people of Brechin need and “for their enjoyment”.
There is no mention of the provision of any continuing worship at the cathedral. Is this a harbinger of the fate of all our cathedrals and churches? The signs certainly seem to be pointing that way.
Our historic churches have often been built on sacred sites, which may even predate the arrival of Christianity in these parts. Pope Gregory’s instruction to St Augustine of Canterbury was not to destroy pagan places of worship but to adapt them for Christian use and, it seems, this was what happened in many cases.
The attachment, therefore, of many non-church-going folk to their parish churches can, at least partly, be accounted for by this lingering folk memory. Such a connexion can be seen, for example, in Philip Larkin’s poem Church Going, where he speaks of his visit to an empty church:
A tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence
There is an often non-verbalised sense of “sacred space”, a place to come to at times of crisis – to reflect, to meditate or just be quiet. TS Eliot sums it up beautifully in his Little Gidding:
You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying
It is true, of course, that this is not the whole story. Our churches have been, and are, regularly used to mark local, national and global events in the context of worship, praise, thanksgiving and prayer. Personally and socially, they often mark the “hatching, matching and dispatching” landmarks of life.
Apart from their use in worship, day by day and Sunday by Sunday, churches and cathedrals host a whole range of public events, such as concerts of sacred music, exhibitions of sacred and other art and much else.
Such use is covered by the canons that these should not in any way be “inconsistent with the sanctity of the place” and that “the words, music, and pictures are such as befit the House of God, are consonant with sound doctrine, and make for the edifying of the people”.
Such discretion has generally been exercised, and “sacred space” respected for what it is, until now. In recent years, however, there has been an increasing number of reports of cathedrals and churches being put to “profane” use.
The explanation usually given is that “it gets people in”. Thus we have all heard of the naves of churches and cathedrals having helter-skelters, crazy golf, “silent” discos and radical art all installed “for the enjoyment of the masses”.
This should not be taken simply as the mistaken desire of clergy to make their buildings “relevant” for the 21st century. It also has to do with the demands by government, local authorities and charitable trusts for these sacred sites to be regularly used for “community activities” as a condition for funding the maintenance and adaptation of these historic buildings for contemporary use.
In one case that I am aware of, the congregation of a church was decanted off to a local park so that the church building could be used for crazy golf, provided as an amenity for the community. In others altars, pews, chairs and sacred objects are regularly removed to allow for such secular “community” and “educational” activity.
It seems to me that what is happening is “death by a thousand cuts”. Sacredness and worship will be squeezed more and more and community activities will take precedence, because they bring in money and people. In due course, the buildings will be, as with Brechin Cathedral, entirely secularised and turned into public halls for use as social amenities. For some this is a sign of adaptation to the needs of the times. For others, like myself, it is a vision to dizzy and to appal.
There is now an urgent need for us to campaign for saving these sacred spaces. Once they are gone, they will never be replaced. The churches need a new concordat with the Government on how the maintenance and adaptation of these national treasures is to be funded without forcing them into the secular mould of the age.
Denominations themselves need to prioritise clerical and lay ministry in these churches and cathedrals over bureaucracy, faddishness and gimmickry, so that people are enabled to encounter transcendence there, to be able to worship, to meditate or just to be quiet, and let the sacredness sink in as it did with Larkin and Eliot.
For a nation built on its Christian heritage and values, is this too much to ask?