Mini-Golf in Rochester Cathedral

I don't see this mockery of the glorious and beautiful Old Testament as anything other than vile blasphemy against the one true God, and his sacred Scriptures... These words are indistinguishable from the mocks of an atheist... You should repent

 

The truth, of scripture speaks for itself. I suggest you read the testimonies of the OT prophets, including Jesus himself who was THE Prophet, prophesied by Moses. The one we should all listen to.

It surely does not take much immagination to mentally visualise what the slaughter and immolation of 20,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep in a single day might have been like, in a place the size of Solomon's Temple, (quite small actually, much smaller than a single room in his Palace, according to scripture), with all that 'flinging about' of the blood, right left and centre. Lev.1:5-17.

It is not heresy to alert people to what the scriptures actually say, when people have naive and wrong ideas of what they actually mean. I rest my case.

 

Explaining the reasons and objectives for these phenomena would be a task that the people who decided to provide them to the public can best address. I for one would be at least willing to listen to their rationalle before kicking off in full cry armed with a whip of cords intent on turning their tables. I might be opposing the Lord's will rather than emulating it, so I would be more cautious about my condemnation.

My initial reaction was somewhat similar to your own I think. One of puzzlement and bewilderment. I only hope that these initiatives actually DO reap some benefits in reaching some of the types of young person that otherwise would not ever even think of going into a cathedral and could forsee no reason whatever to do so.

I can still remember when I plucked up courage as an 18 year old, to enter a Bank for the first ever time in my life and be interviewed by a bank manager. Imagine what it might be like for a teenager brought up by atheists who had a distinct aversion to ecclesiastical establishment of any kind.

Any kind of positive non threatening experience in a cathedral would be a huge Plus for one such child of God. Don't deprive them of it.
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There are limits! And of course that is exactly what is being discussed here. It is about where we draw the line and why we decided to draw it where we decide to put it. I would say we all have different yard sticks to decide these issues. Just as The Pharisees had different yard sticks to measure with than did Jesus. That was why they fell out with Him. They lacked the confidence and competence to meaure with HIS yardstick and instead insisted on using only their own.
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I am 18 and have been brought up by atheists, and until relatively recently did have this aversion. I can say with absolute confidence that mini-golf and Helter skelters would put me and probably most others from going.

 

Perhaps that is the point? To make a prophetic statement that people prefer fun to worhipping God?
But somehow I don't think so.

 

I completely agree that there are limits. To most people who want to worship God in a church or cathedral, a mini-golf or a helter skelter are way above the limit.

 

The articles I have read indicate the following. The Dean of Rochester argued that they were responding to the call of the Most Reverend Justin Welby ABofC to the need for our church life to embrace a sense of fun. The Dean of Lincoln argued that the installation was not a gimmick but rather enabled people to have a closer view of some of the architectural features of the ceiling of the cathedral. I don't think either of the Very Reverend persons have argued their case well.

As I understand something of the history of worship, there have been times when there has been a marked divide between what was going on in the sanctuary and what was happening in the nave. I know the first time I went to an Orthodox liturgy I was confused, the folk up frond were wandering in and out, with little entrances and great entrances, and all manner of things, whilst in the nave people were seemingly standing around, some paying attention, some reading their books, and other wandering in and out, for a chat, to have a smoke, (oh there was a bit of that up front too - different smoke) and it went on for 3 and a half hours. One of the things the reformation gave us was a great integration between up front and down in the nave. We know what is going on, we can understand what is going on, and we are part of what is going on. We recovered the meaning of the word liturgy - derived from the two greek words laos and ergon (the peoples work).

Jesus did not endorse some sort of fake clericalism but rather the veil in the temple was split from top to bottom. Jesus calls us to embrace the connection between the sanctuary and the nave, between our life in worship and our life in the street. Now I have played mini-golf (but not in a cathedral) and I have been on slippery dips and various circus attractions. I don't regard them as bad things.

I think our challenge today is to make worship culturally accessible to the people of our age. When ArchBishop Cranmer and and others penned the liturgy in the vulgar tongue it wasn't written in street speak, but rather in language designed to lift and enable people to move beyond, it was more of a high classical english. Most modern liturgies try to find that sort of position, though sometimes things fail in execution.

In reality mini-golf and helter-skelter are not the aim or the goal of the church, so they may be aids (gimmicks) to get people in the building and maybe thereby providing some commercial advantage for the cathedral, but I don't see how they in any real way are furthering the mission of Jesus which is the true business of the church. I know the last time I played mini-golf with my grandson I was encouraging him not to invoke the name of God in that setting.

 

To my thinking its a matter of reverence, something that is lacking here in the States (I can't speak for Britain). Does the Cathedral not have property? A yard or a parking lot? Over here the Romans regularly have full on carnivals on their grounds, but they never would bring it into the church building. Now, we can accuse the romans of much, but not irreverence I think.
As for the great slaughterhouse that was the Temple, the priests and levites were doing exactly what God had commanded them in the scriptures, and I imagine with great reverence. See Leviticus 10:1-3.

 

That is what the discussion is about. Opinions concerning our preferences regarding cathedral furniture. To some the very idea of something so secular as crazy golf or a helter-skelter is sacrilege bordering on blasphemy. To others it is incongruous or inappropriate or inoffensive or fun.

Somehow I can't see Jesus getting anywhere near as angry about kids enjoying crazy Golf in the dry or whizzing down a helter-skelter at the back end of the cathedral, as he did when the High Priest cornered the market of the Temple exchange rate and set up his racket in the court of the Gentiles as a Money Supermarket lookalike, stopping the Gentiles from being allowed in for prayer.

There is not any real comparison between the two situations. I rather doubt if the golf or the helter-skelter are in use during the regular brief hourly prayer periods which some cathedrals, (I am thinking here of Salisbury), carry out, asking visitors to pause and reflect on God at the place they are standing. Prayer, after all, should come as naturally to us as golf or helter-skeltering or any other activity in a life that we have God to thank for.
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That may well be true, but that fact would not make it any less a slaughter house, with all the accompanying emotional discomfort, even trauma, that would cause to most modern believers if forced to witness it day after day.

Solomon's Temple was, by his own admission, not the sacred dwelling place of God, 1 Kings 8:27.

If we are trying to produce an atmosphere conducive to prayer and a sense of closeness to God then we would need something more like the mount of Transfiguration or the joyful kinship Wedding at Cana in Galilee, or the picknik on the beach after the resurrection, rather than a slaughter house dedicated to brutally killing innocent animals on the pretext that butchery could remove our guilt of sin.

It is very clear that Jesus must have instructed his disciples on the futility of animal sacrificial substitution, Matt.9:13, Matt.12:7, however much they might have considered it to be "exactly what God had commanded them to do in their scriptures".

Jesus didn't intend for them to continue with that notion after his own sacrificial death. He came to put an end to "Exactly what God commanded", so I am dubious whether God actually commanded it in the first place, since Jesus IS God and clearly HE put an end to the notion, once and for all. Heb.10:10.
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Whether they would put you off is not really the point though is it. You probably would not see any point in going there anyhow if there was even less reason for being there and nothing that attracted you to the place in the first place. The question then would be which would an 18 year old child of atheists find more attractive or stimulating of curiosity; silent contemplation, crazy golf/helterskelter or something else entirely. Most probably none of them, if I know anything about the habits of the average 18 year old. We need to meet these people where they are, not try to attract them in to where we feel safe.

The question then is: Will this experiment bear much fruit, or wither on the vine? We shall see.
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Hey all, what to think of this?

 

Widows might. I mean mite or is it myte?

In all seriousness though, I have to agree, this is a step too far, not to say a yard or two too far. Why is the font not covered? Why does it have water in it? Was the water blessed? Is it the water that is important in baptism or the font itself? Is it the faith concerned in baptism which is more important than the water or the font?

The questions go on, but I fully understand why you are offended by the image you have posted up. I find it not conducive to good order or true religion to use the font as a fund raiser. Smacks of indulgences to me.
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What do you get when you mix a church building and unchurched people? You get people doing un-churchy things. The visitors probably have no idea of "holy water" and the only worldly analogue they can relate to is the common water fountain... into which most ordinary folks will commonly toss a coin and make a wish.

Surely not the first time people have engaged in pagan superstition within church walls (more's the pity).

 

https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/bishop...of-norwich-cathedral-helter-skelter-1-6210312

 

What bothers me the most is how antiquated this 'fun house' is... These lights, these shapes, it's like out of some grandpa's dream... I can't think of anyone under 50 who would find this 'installation' to be an attraction

If they at least installed a VR arena or an e-sports League of Legends booth to 'attract young people' (or whatever) I would've understood it (not really, but at least I'd see them try)... Them installing this funhouse from some octogenarian's 'young days' just shows these are liberal octogerianians, running our sacred churches, have no idea of what the hell they're doing

It's like some young punk from the 1960s, who as he got older saw everyone before him retire, and in 2019 was automatically ushered into power, but still has his middle finger stretched out to everything that's sacred

 

The church has had a fairly benign attitude to pagan ignorance since its founding. The strategy by and large has been one of get them interested first before trying to educate them, then educate them, then baptize them in the name of Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Then we begin to have expectations vis a vis their behaviour as believers. That is the general sequence expected in the Great Commission I think.

It was only after the church got the reins of power during the reign of Contantine that the church started getting nasty and destructive with pagan worship sites and treating pagans cruelly if they did not recant their foolish ways. Such unchristian attitudes culminated in the pogroms and witch hunts of the medievil-to-middle ages until some time after the reformation. I think it a good thing that most christians don't want to go back there. The church still has a somewhat understanding and tolerant attitude to some pagan superstitions, as the remaining carved bosses and statues of Green Men testify to, in many of our churches and cathedrals. Just masons hedging their bets.
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I would need to say here though that some people will never "See it differently", because outrage will bring down the red mist over their eyes or 'seeing they will not see and hearing they will not hear'. Se la vie. Christ was philosophical about people's lack of engagement, so should we be. Just move on.
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