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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Church Services in Fiction
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Sarasa
Shipmate
# 12271
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Posted
The Ship of Fools book of the month is Golden Hill by Francis Spufford. There are several scenes set in an Anglican Chruch in eighteenth Century New York , and it got me thinking what are people's favourite scenes set in church in books, films etc.
David Lodge's The Picturegoers has rather a good scene in a Catholic church if I remember rightly.
Oh and my pet hate are films where for no good reason something is set in a Catholic church for colour I guess, rather than as an integral part of the plot.
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Baptist Trainfan
Shipmate
# 15128
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Posted
There is a rather horrific Welsh Chapel scene in "How Green Was My Valley" - certainly the book and probably the film - where two young people who have been caught in flagrante are brought before the congregation and condemned.
There are also nice descriptions of village Church and Chapel services in Flora Thompson's "Lark Rise to Candleford".
I have two pet hates in films or TV series.
1. People go into church and it is simply awash with lit candles. Who has paid for (and lit) these? What will the insurance company say?
2. People go into church and, of course, the Priest/Vicar is present. How many clergy spend all their time inside church?
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
It is probably a waste of time to complain of movie and TV versions. Accuracy is always on the bubble there, easily sacrificed for look. The director says, "OMG, a priest in black? Looks boring. I need flash. Get him a cope and miter, something with gold embroidery." And that it is a Wesleyan chapel won't be an issue.
Books are far better, because the page is a more considered form, under the control of one artist. I recall being astonished, in the Lucia and Mapp books by E.F. Benson, how much time the dear Vicar was able to spend playing bridge and golf. And Benson was from an ecclesiastical family, so I'm sure he was accurate.
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
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Sipech
Shipmate
# 16870
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Posted
It reminds me of this classic from Rich Wyld's theologygrams.
For my favourite scene I would have to return to Rev. as there were so many. But I'm really fond the 'honest prayer' voiceover monologues. They are better than any liturgy anyone came up with.
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Bishops Finger
Shipmate
# 5430
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Posted
Ernest Raymond (1888-1974) included religious scenes in several of his novels in the 1930s-1940s. The only one I've actually read is The Chalice and the Sword, set in the late 30s, and centred around the Rev. Piers Daubeny, Vicar of the parish of St. John the Prior, Potter's Dale, London.
Chapter 1 depicts 'Sung Mass and Sermon' in a run-down and difficult 'slum parish', typical of the time. Raymond himself studied at Chichester Theological College, was ordained, but left Holy Orders in 1923. Nevertheless, the priest in the story is portrayed very sympathetically.
Worth a read, if you can get hold of a copy!
IJ
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Our words are giants when they do us an injury, and dwarfs when they do us a service. (Wilkie Collins)
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Jengie jon
Semper Reformanda
# 273
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Posted
If I recall correctly church services appear in George Elliot's work. I seem to recall a description in Silas Marner about how his attending the local Anglican Parish church differed from his earlier experience in a Nonconformist sect.
I think she also describes early Methodist meetings in Adam Bede.
Jengie
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Bishops Finger
Shipmate
# 5430
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Posted
Winston Graham's Poldark novels often feature services, usually at St. Sawle, Sawle-with-Grambler, with the downtrodden, underpaid Curate, Rev. Clarence Odgers. Rev. Odgers sometimes crosses swords with the new Methodist group in the district, led by Sam Carne, Demelza Poldark's brother (converted, IIRC, at Gwennap?).
Not fiction exactly, but Dickens' descriptions of services in City of London churches in about 1860, recorded in The Uncommercial Traveller (Chapter XI) are revealing and entertaining...
Not sure about Silas Marner (can't find my copy just now), but I'm sure Jengie jon is right about the Methodists in Adam Bede.
IJ
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Our words are giants when they do us an injury, and dwarfs when they do us a service. (Wilkie Collins)
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BroJames
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# 9636
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Posted
I like the service in the church at Dukes Denver towards the end of Dorothy L. Sayers's Busman's Honeymoon for an insight into the mind of the worshipper.
There's also rather a good evensong scene in one of Edmund Crispin's Gervase Fen mysteries (The Moving Toyshop IIRC) where something turns on the fact that it includes the Lord's Prayer twice, (BCP) once without the doxology.
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Bishops Finger
Shipmate
# 5430
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Posted
Sorry - Chapter IX of The Uncommercial Traveller....
IJ
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Our words are giants when they do us an injury, and dwarfs when they do us a service. (Wilkie Collins)
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Bishops Finger
Shipmate
# 5430
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Posted
Or how about the funeral service for the corpse discovered in the churchyard, in Sayers' The Nine Tailors ?
Lord Peter Wimsey's reflections on the words of the 1662 BCP service for The Burial Of The Dead make me want to have that service for my own funeral....in due course..... ![[Ultra confused]](graemlins/confused2.gif)
The same novel also features other services at Fenchurch St. Paul, and its hard-working Rector, Rev. Theodore Venables.
IJ
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Our words are giants when they do us an injury, and dwarfs when they do us a service. (Wilkie Collins)
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
Sayers' father was a rector in a large crumbling rectory, so she was writing from knowledge. And there's loads of ecclesiastical stuff in Trollope. Barchester may be fictional, but the church politics seem quite real.
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Bishops Finger
Shipmate
# 5430
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Posted
Indeed, and Hardy also wrote from his own (or his father's) experience - by the time TH was growing up, the old west-gallery quires were on their way out.
His poem Afternoon Service at Mellstock captures the moment in his own inimitable way:
http://casterbridge.blogspot.co.uk/2007/07/afternoon-service-at-mellstock-circa.html
Sorry - we're getting away from fiction ...
Back to the telly - I recall, years ago, a wedding in EastEnders where the Vicar wore a green stole. The BBC couldn't even get that right.. ![[Disappointed]](graemlins/disappointed.gif)
IJ
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Our words are giants when they do us an injury, and dwarfs when they do us a service. (Wilkie Collins)
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Gee D
Shipmate
# 13815
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
Books are far better, because the page is a more considered form, under the control of one artist. I recall being astonished, in the Lucia and Mapp books by E.F. Benson, how much time the dear Vicar was able to spend playing bridge and golf. And Benson was from an ecclesiastical family, so I'm sure he was accurate.
Benson's father being Cantaur, and his mother setting up house with a daughter of his father's predecessor.
When there is a church service though, little detail is given just enough to suggest a low to middle C of E Morning Prayer.
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Not every Anglican in Sydney is Sydney Anglican
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Bishops Finger:
Indeed, and Hardy also wrote from his own (or his father's) experience - by the time TH was growing up, the old west-gallery quires were on their way out.
His poem Afternoon Service at Mellstock captures the moment in his own inimitable way:
http://casterbridge.blogspot.co.uk/2007/07/afternoon-service-at-mellstock-circa.html
Sorry - we're getting away from fiction ...
Back to the telly - I recall, years ago, a wedding in EastEnders where the Vicar wore a green stole. The BBC couldn't even get that right..
IJ
Mind you, there are clergy who wouldn't get it right either. Our vicar, who tbf usually does get it right, did a wedding (no nuptial mass) in a white chasuble (horrible Roman-cut thing it was too) a couple of years ago because, hey, it was the right colour, and the church was cold so she wanted another layer...
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Nicolemr
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# 28
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Posted
Someone must say it... how about the wedding scene in The Princess Bride? ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
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Piglet
Islander
# 11803
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Posted
A friend on FB posted a picture the other day of a still from the Ulster Television production of A Nightingale Falling, set in Ireland during the War of Independence.
The scene was a church service, and in the foreground, on the organ console, was a copy of the Irish Church Hymnal, which was published in 2000 (my Better Half was one of the music consultants in the publication). ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
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I may not be on an island any more, but I'm still an islander.
alto n a soprano who can read music
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Baker
Shipmate
# 18458
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Posted
There's a scene in Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer, a Sunday morning service during a hot Missouri summer. It describes Tom's discomfort and boredom.
But that scene, when I read it in early elementary school, helped me learn the liturgy in my own church. There's a line that goes "It was a relief when the benediction was pronounced and the service was over." I realized that the benediction was the ending, and next Sunday I started following along with the order of service, because I wanted to know how much longer the service was going to last!
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Ad astra per aspera
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MaryLouise
Shipmate
# 18697
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Posted
The sermons on hell preached by Fr Arnall on a day of retreat at the college attended by Stephen Daedelus in Joyce's Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man (Chapter3). These leaned heavily on Dante's Inferno as well as the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyala.
Ever since reading this at school, I've thought of hell as a neglected, overgrown field of thistles and nettles with goatish creatures wandering around in unending circles.
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MaryLouise
Shipmate
# 18697
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Posted
Oh, and on South African TV at the moment, there's the 2013 BBC series of Fr Brown, Chesterton's detective transposed to the 1950s. There's a parish priest with plenty of time on his hands.
[ 25. January 2017, 05:07: Message edited by: MaryLouise ]
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“As regards plots I find real life no help at all. Real life seems to have no plots.”
-- Ivy Compton-Burnett
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venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
1. People go into church and it is simply awash with lit candles. Who has paid for (and lit) these? What will the insurance company say?
2. People go into church and, of course, the Priest/Vicar is present. How many clergy spend all their time inside church?
Walk into St Michael's Croydon any week day morning and the shrines are ablaze. A priest, usually the vicar, will be along for mass at 12.30.
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Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.
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Baptist Trainfan
Shipmate
# 15128
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Posted
Fair enough - but it's not just the shrines. Often (on TV) there are candles placed in every nook and cranny and all over the reredos.
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Jengie jon
Semper Reformanda
# 273
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Posted
George MacDonald has quite a lot in his this world novels. I have read a Maiden's Bequest. It describes both the Church of Scotland and Free Church/Congregational* and accounts of worship as well as quite close observation of clergy.
Jengie
*George MacDonald was a radical Congregational Minister. Otherwise, I would assume this was Free Church. It also might give some reason why ministers play such a large point. There are at least three ministers or prospective ministers in the Maiden's Bequest.
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"To violate a persons ability to distinguish fact from fantasy is the epistemological equivalent of rape." Noretta Koertge
Back to my blog
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venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
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Posted
Robertson Davies’ The Cunning Man opens with the celebrant at Good Friday dropping dead at the altar in a Canadian Anglo Catholic church. The church and clergy are central to the plot and there are a number of descriptions of the (esoteric and individual) services that go on there.
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Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.
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jedijudy
Organist of the Jedi Temple
# 333
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Posted
As you might guess, I notice the organs and organists in fictional church services. They are usually so funny that I laugh uncontrollably!
One such is in the movie "In and Out" where we hear magnificent organ music, but when you see the console and little old lady playing it, the instrument is a tiny little electronic organ, otherwise known as a musical toaster.
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Pigwidgeon
Ship's Owl
# 10192
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by jedijudy:
As you might guess, I notice the organs and organists in fictional church services. They are usually so funny that I laugh uncontrollably!
One such is in the movie "In and Out" where we hear magnificent organ music, but when you see the console and little old lady playing it, the instrument is a tiny little electronic organ, otherwise known as a musical toaster.
Much like the sounds that Schroeder can get out of his little toy piano!
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~Tortuf
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Baptist Trainfan
Shipmate
# 15128
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Posted
Lots of church services in Jan Karon's "Mitford" novels which I read years ago.
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leo
Shipmate
# 1458
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by MaryLouise:
Oh, and on South African TV at the moment, there's the 2013 BBC series of Fr Brown, Chesterton's detective transposed to the 1950s. There's a parish priest with plenty of time on his hands.
And he wears a stole over a chasuble, black (instead of purple) stole for confession, uses the offertory prayer ‘ Blessed are you…’ from Novus Ordo in English and has a medieval church – or was that what Chesterton fantasised about - England sill being RC?
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Og, King of Bashan
Ship's giant Amorite
# 9562
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by BroJames:
There's also rather a good evensong scene in one of Edmund Crispin's Gervase Fen mysteries (The Moving Toyshop IIRC) where something turns on the fact that it includes the Lord's Prayer twice, (BCP) once without the doxology.
I've only read The Case of the Gilded Fly, and that one has a scene set at Evensong as well- the organist is murdered shortly after the choir sings Expectans Expectavi.
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"I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?" ― Walker Percy
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Ricardus
Shipmate
# 8757
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Posted
There is another one (I've forgotten which) where Fen visits a chapel of a very small Non-Conformist denomination. It's rather catty, and includes the wonderful line 'several previous lastlys had proved to be duds, but he had high hopes of this one'.
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
Posts: 7247 | From: Liverpool, UK | Registered: Nov 2004
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venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jengie jon:
I think she also describes early Methodist meetings in Adam Bede.
It is an open air preaching service with a woman preacher.
Eliot is very interesting in that although she was an atheist, she describes religious experience with far more sensitivity and conviction than any male Victorian novelist. (I still prefer Dickens though – I’ve just finished Bleak House and Esther is first aware of Lady Dedlock attending church at Chesney Wold. There are no details of the service.)
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Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.
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betjemaniac
Shipmate
# 17618
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Posted
there is an excellent open air full immersion adult baptism in Powell and Pressburger's Gone to Earth.
From the same directors is the beyond breathtaking ending of A Canterbury Tale - hundreds of soldiers in Canterbury Cathedral about to go off to Normandy.
Makes my room get very dusty - every time. It is available on youtube if you're interested.
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And is it true? For if it is....
Posts: 1481 | From: behind the dreaming spires | Registered: Mar 2013
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venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
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Posted
At the opposite extreme to George Eliot’s lapsed evangelical earnestness, there is the ultimate catholic camp, laden with double entendre, of Ronald Firbank. "Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli" opens in church when the Cardinal is baptizing (as only becomes apparent at the end of the chapter) a duchess’ lap dog.
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Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.
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Niminypiminy
Shipmate
# 15489
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Posted
There's a wonderful nonconformist chapel service scene in Cold Comfort Farm, where Amos preaches a hilarious hell-fire sermon. "Ah -- but there'll be no butter in hell!" is but one lovely moment from it.
At the other extreme, Elizabeth Goudge has a celestial description of Mattins in The Little White Horse. And In the Dean's Watch the climax of the book is a Christmas Day sermon.
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Spike
Mostly Harmless
# 36
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
I have two pet hates in films or TV series.
1. People go into church and it is simply awash with lit candles. Who has paid for (and lit) these? What will the insurance company say?
2. People go into church and, of course, the Priest/Vicar is present. How many clergy spend all their time inside church?
And a tiny, remote village church has an organ and a peal of bells worthy of York Minster
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"May you get to heaven before the devil knows you're dead" - Irish blessing
Posts: 12860 | From: The Valley of Crocuses | Registered: May 2001
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BroJames
Shipmate
# 9636
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by MaryLouise:
Oh, and on South African TV at the moment, there's the 2013 BBC series of Fr Brown, Chesterton's detective transposed to the 1950s. There's a parish priest with plenty of time on his hands.
And he wears a stole over a chasuble, black (instead of purple) stole for confession, uses the offertory prayer ‘ Blessed are you…’ from Novus Ordo in English and has a medieval church – or was that what Chesterton fantasised about - England sill being RC?
No. Chesterton's Father Brown is a country priest who in the stories is London-based, but travels all over the world. For audience related reasons, the producers of the TV series decided` it needed to be set in the 50s, and in a distinct place (the budget wouldn't cover overseas shooting anyway). A Cotswold village was conveniently near to Birmingham for filming and not too much changed since the 1950s, so that was what was used as a location. I'm not sure that they were aware that the way they set him up made him look very Anglican (the other things you mention suggest that they are not sensitive to that kind of thing). Also the Chesterton's satirising of English anti-Catholicism is lost.
It is years since I read the books, and the only faint lingering of any sense of place in them in my mind is definitely urban - and not a village in the Cotswolds, or even Essex.
Posts: 3374 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2005
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Fr Weber
Shipmate
# 13472
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
Robertson Davies’ The Cunning Man opens with the celebrant at Good Friday dropping dead at the altar in a Canadian Anglo Catholic church. The church and clergy are central to the plot and there are a number of descriptions of the (esoteric and individual) services that go on there.
The church in this novel is a thinly-disguised expy of St Mary Magdalene, Toronto.
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"The Eucharist is not a play, and you're not Jesus."
--Sr Theresa Koernke, IHM
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
I was going to write a mystery novel set in a church, because churches are such a great environment. Also with the right pew design you could probably stride from one pew back to the next, and how could I arrange this except in fiction? Have never written it, but if I do the church building will be a straight steal from my own church complete with the secret passage into the chapel from behind the xerox machine, and the locked connecting passage from one of the minor offices into the hallway to the sacristy. And the mysterious attic above the closet where all the electrical wires have congregated for the past hundred years. No man knows what lurks up there; once the organ burst into flame (a short circuit) and even then nothing was done...
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
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Pigwidgeon
Ship's Owl
# 10192
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Posted
I'd really love to see your church!
I could offer you, in exchange, the trap door under the table in our Church Treasurer's office that goes down to a basement of unknown horrors.
![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
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"...that is generally a matter for Pigwidgeon, several other consenting adults, a bottle of cheap Gin and the odd giraffe."
~Tortuf
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
Well if you're ever near DC we can sneak over and I'll give you the tour.
Oh, and during the reign of the previous rector, who was into immersion baptisms, a hot tub was installed in the flooring directly under the altar. You have to move the table back, pry up the boards, and there it is. All ready for dipping! It is now used perhaps once a year (never in the winter months, because I don't believe there is a heating element in there -- just hot water from the boiler. Which is not large.)
Doesn't it all cry out to be the setting of something or another?
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
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Hedgehog
Ship's Shortstop
# 14125
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
Oh, and during the reign of the previous rector, who was into immersion baptisms, a hot tub was installed in the flooring directly under the altar. You have to move the table back, pry up the boards, and there it is.
Okay, so we know where the body is going to be found. That's much better than the electrical attic, which is a far better place to hide the key to the locked connecting passage into the sacristy hallway.
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"We must regain the conviction that we need one another, that we have a shared responsibility for others and the world, and that being good and decent are worth it."--Pope Francis, Laudato Si'
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Bishops Finger
Shipmate
# 5430
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Posted
Ah, but the electrical Black Hole may be responsible for the death. The fact that the body is found in the baptistery doesn't necessarily mean that drowning is the cause..
Ahem.
Back to the OP, and an earlier point by Jengie jon about George Eliot's Silas Marner. There is indeed a scene where Silas' kind neighbour, Dolly, tries to invite him to her beloved Raveloe Church for the Christmas service, promising such delights as the 'anthim' and the 'sacramen' (sic). Eliot also tells us that a feature of Christmas Day was the Athanasian Creed - O deep joy - and that the church had a band (doubtless similar to that described by Thomas Hardy in Under The Greenwood Tree).
Altogether, quite a sympathetic view of early 19th C Anglican worship, contrasting with Silas' experience of the whitewashed walls of 'the church in Lantern Yard', where believers' baptism only is practised, deacons rule, and the minister preaches 'unquestioned doctrine'.
IJ
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Our words are giants when they do us an injury, and dwarfs when they do us a service. (Wilkie Collins)
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Baptist Trainfan
Shipmate
# 15128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
Oh, and during the reign of the previous rector, who was into immersion baptisms, a hot tub was installed in the flooring directly under the altar.
Hot tub?
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Bishops Finger
Shipmate
# 5430
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Posted
Possibly cheaper than a bespoke baptistery?
But yes...
IJ
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Our words are giants when they do us an injury, and dwarfs when they do us a service. (Wilkie Collins)
Posts: 10151 | From: Behind The Wheel Again! | Registered: Jan 2004
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Aravis
Shipmate
# 13824
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Posted
Some of the most detailed descriptions of church services in fiction are in the novels of Charles Williams - the musical setting of the Anthanasian Creed in "The Greater Trumps" (unfortunate title these days...) and the rather beautiful death of the priest while celebrating the eucharist at the end of "War in Heaven".
Another description simply celebrating the beauty of church music is in Joanna Trollope's "The Choir".
But on the whole more recent novels use church services either as a means of assembling characters in a formal setting from which they can't escape (e.g. The wedding in Audrey Niffenegger's "The Time Traveler's Wife" or Bunny's funeral in Donna Tartt's "The Secret History") or as an expression of irony showing the dysfunctional currents underneath (e.g. The meditative services with all their trivial announcements in Iris Murdoch's "The Bell"; the father's attempts at evangelism in Barbara Kingsolver's "The Poisonwood Bible"). And, of course, there is the public conflict - the condemnation of Jeanette Winterson's relationship with Melanie in the middle of the service in "Oranges are not the only fruit".
I've just noticed all those, apart from Charles Williams, are female authors although I don't think I mainly read female authors?
Posts: 689 | From: S Wales | Registered: Jun 2008
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
Not very many Nonconformist church services depicted in British fiction, I think. In the 19th c. I understand there was something of a market for novels that dealt with Methodist concerns, but of course no one reads them now. Out of interest, does Arnold Bennett ever depict actual chapel worship, as opposed to just chapel culture? Does Welsh writing offer any good examples?
I tend to read novels of modern urban life, which is where I come across references to church worship, mostly in the CofE. There's the Anglo-Catholic world of Michael Arditti in 'Easter', and the evangelical setting of Alex Preston's 'The Revelations', both very good novels, but I can't vouch for the accuracy of either.
Black British writers occasionally depict Pentecostal preachers in full swing, their sermons serving to reveal their own or their listeners' emotional turmoil.
One more recommendation. For those who lean towards magic realism, Earl Lovelace's novel 'The Wine of Astonishment' will be fascinating. It's about the persecution of the Spiritual Baptist movement in Trinidad early in the 20th c. A wonderfully moving and informative story.
Posts: 6668 | From: UK | Registered: Feb 2012
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
There's a description of a non-conformist service in one of the Peter Wimsey books. Peter Wimsey goes to see his tame burglar (Rumm?) who's now got religion and stays for the service (is it Strong Poison?) - it's what comes to mind when Sankey and Moody are discussed on the Ship. Miss Climpson also talks about confession and services in Unnatural Death.
The Psalm Mysteries by Kate Charles have CofE church services - including cathedral morning prayer, evensong and funerals in Appointed to Die and an Anglo-Catholic Patronal Service in A Drink of Deadly Wine, plus services at Walsingham in The Snares of Death.
[ 28. January 2017, 13:44: Message edited by: Curiosity killed ... ]
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
Oh, and during the reign of the previous rector, who was into immersion baptisms, a hot tub was installed in the flooring directly under the altar.
Hot tub?
No lie. Come and I'll show it to you. It does not have the heating/circulating engine, that heats the hot tub's water and makes it bubble around like the ones you see in movies or at posh hotels. All it is fitted for is running water, and to drain into the sewer line. Essentially it's a 10-person bathtub. The immersion baptisms are full of excitement and call for many many towels. Also swimwear.
Backyard baptisms in California are often done in hot tubs. Or swimming pools. There is a noncomformist church here in northern VA which built the sanctuary with, essentially, a deep narrow bathtub directly behind the altar table. You just run the water, raise the curtains (or open the doors, I forget which) and boom, immersion baptism in fifteen minutes.
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
Oh, I have a good one, recommended by no less than Ursula K. LeGuin. By John Galt, a contemporary of Jane Austen, Annals of a Parish. It's available for free on Project Gutenberg. The fictional memoirs of a Rev. Micah Balwhidder, rector of a rural parish somewhere in Scotland. It is quite funny -- he begins by taking up his parish and being met at the church door (which is nailed shut) by a howling mob of his protesting congregation. But he survives this rocky start to become beloved by all.
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
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