Ship of Fools: Church Services in Fiction

Thread: Church Services in Fiction Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Sarasa (# 12271) on :

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.

Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :

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?

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

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.

Posted by Sipech (# 16870) on :

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.

Posted by Bishops Finger (# 5430) on :

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

Posted by Jengie jon (# 273) on :

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

Posted by Bishops Finger (# 5430) on :

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

Posted by BroJames (# 9636) on :

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.

Posted by Bishops Finger (# 5430) on :

Sorry - Chapter IX of The Uncommercial Traveller....

IJ

Posted by Bishops Finger (# 5430) on :

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]

The same novel also features other services at Fenchurch St. Paul, and its hard-working Rector, Rev. Theodore Venables.

IJ

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

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.

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

Thomas Hardy's 'Under the Greenwood Tree' has a description of a pew- Oxford Moment, pre- chancel choir with instrunents in the gallery

Posted by Bishops Finger (# 5430) on :

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]

Posted by Gee D (# 13815) on :

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.

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :

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...

Posted by Nicolemr (# 28) on :

Someone must say it... how about the wedding scene in The Princess Bride? [Biased]

Posted by Piglet (# 11803) on :

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]

Posted by Baker (# 18458) on :

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!

Posted by MaryLouise (# 18697) on :

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.

Posted by MaryLouise (# 18697) on :

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 ]

Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :

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.

Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :

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.

Posted by Jengie jon (# 273) on :

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.

Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :

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.

Posted by jedijudy (# 333) on :

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.

Posted by Pigwidgeon (# 10192) on :

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!

Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :

Lots of church services in Jan Karon's "Mitford" novels which I read years ago.

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

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?

Posted by Og, King of Bashan (# 9562) on :

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.

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

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'.

Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :

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.)

Posted by betjemaniac (# 17618) on :

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.

Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :

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.

Posted by Niminypiminy (# 15489) on :

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.

Posted by Spike (# 36) on :

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

Posted by BroJames (# 9636) on :

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.

Posted by Fr Weber (# 13472) on :

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.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

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...

Posted by Pigwidgeon (# 10192) on :

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!]

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

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?

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

Colin Dexter's 'A Service for all the Dead' has a very accurate portrayal of an Anglo-Catholic Requiem Mass.

Posted by Hedgehog (# 14125) on :

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.

Posted by Bishops Finger (# 5430) on :

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

Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :

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?

Posted by Bishops Finger (# 5430) on :

Possibly cheaper than a bespoke baptistery?

But yes... [Eek!]

Posted by Aravis (# 13824) on :

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?

Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :

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.

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

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 ... ]

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

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.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

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.

Posted by Galilit (# 16470) on :

Many of Michael Arditti's novels.
Five in particular are The Enemy of the Good, The Breath of Night, Pagan and her Parents, Easter and and The Celibate

Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :

Most of these references to have been brief scenes.

The main part of the action in James Baldwin's Go Tell it on the Mountain is during an all night session at a New York Pentecostal store front church.

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :

There is the very memorable service (mostly sermon) at the Seamen's Chapel in Moby Dick.

Posted by Niminypiminy (# 15489) on :

Just remembered another one - The Perpetual Curate by Margaret Oliphant, which concerns a non-beneficed clergyman who has come under the influence of the Oxford Movement, while his aunts, who are patrons of a living, are devout Evangelicals. Not only are there lots of church services but the plot turns on the theology of his Easter sermon. (Besides ecclesiology there is also a love interest.)

Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :

Sounds a must have.

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Bishops Finger:
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'.

I have the impression that the church in Lantern Yard was a Huguenot congregation. I think I recall references to a foreign language, and Marner could easily be a French name.

Moo

Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :

quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
Most of these references to have been brief scenes.

The main part of the action in James Baldwin's Go Tell it on the Mountain is during an all night session at a New York Pentecostal store front church.

Would you recommend this novel? I've had it in mind for a long time.

African American writing has a relatively large space, I think, for church scenes, since churchgoing is such a significant historical part of that culture; and there's plenty of material for dramatic conflict regarding the gap between church teachings and the way that many people live.

At the popular end of things there even seems to be a market for African American church-based romance novels.

Posted by Bishops Finger (# 5430) on :

I can't find any references to a foreign language in Silas Marner, but Eliot does refer to 'phrases at once occult and familiar' when describing the church in Lantern Yard (Chapter II), which could possibly mean speaking in tongues.

Later, Eliot mentions the fact that Silas has only ever seen adults being baptised, so that the idea of 'christening' the foundling toddler Eppie is quite alien to him.

My guess is that Lantern Yard is a Strict and Particular Baptist chapel, but would glossolalia have been common at that time (around 1800)?

IJ

Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :

Silas isn't French. They sound pretty English to me..

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
Silas isn't French. They sound pretty English to me..

I didn't mean that Silas is sounds French; I meant that Marner did.

Moo

Posted by Bishops Finger (# 5430) on :

Well, the Huguenots had been in England for some considerable time before 1800...

Without wising to labour the point, I'm not sure that George Eliot had any particular (sic) sect in mind. There were lots of them about at the time she wrote Silas Marner, and it must have been hard at times for outsiders to differentiate between the various little backstreet or village chapels.

IJ

Posted by Bishops Finger (# 5430) on :

Niminypiminy - thanks for the reference to Mrs. Oliphant's The Perpetual Curate , wot I av just this minnit bort off Mr. Ebay for less than 3 quid...
[Eek!]

(It's a used paperback, BTW - can't run to a First Edition just at the moment)

IJ

Posted by Pangolin Guerre (# 18686) on :

Why it stuck with me, God only knows, but when I was 12 we read Moonfleet in English class. There are church scenes, but the one that stayed with me describes an old woman in church, pretending to be literate (but holds the book incorrectly?).

At the mention of Robertson Davies, comes to mind the scene in Fifth Business, in which Boy Staunton, an ambitious businessman, not born an Anglican, is described as his knee just barely touching the floor before taking his pew, at St Paul's, Bloor St, establishing his parvenu status. St Paul's is LC.

There is a very strange brief funeral scene in Graham Greene's Dr Fisher of Geneva.

On the subject of Greene, his Monsignor Quixote has been on my mind all day, because, as I was returning from lunch, walking ahead of me was a businessman wearing purple socks. I have a call in to Opus Dei.

Posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe (# 5521) on :

No one has yet mentioned the "Marilyn Monroe Cathedral" scene in the movie version of The Who's Tommy, where a statue of Marilyn Monroe is a thinly disguised substitute for the Blessed Virgin.

Eric Clapton on guitar is the worship leader, who sings "Eyesight to the Blind" as sidesmen in Marilyn Monroe drag and masks direct the faithful up to the rail with a "You! C'm here!" gesture.

At the rail, people in wheelchairs touch the hem of Marilyn's dress ("If I could only touch the hem of his garment") and then are wheeled away by their caretakers to await the miracle cure.

Of course, when deaf, dumb and blind Tommy is led up, the statue comes crashing down to the ground when he touches it.

Also worthy of mention is the "coronation scene" in the war-ruined cathedral in the film King of Hearts, where the inmates of the local lunatic asylum all break out and assume their only-dreamed-of roles. As the "bishop" spouts fake Latin as he crowns the "king", the choir of "ladies of the night" sing a hymn and incense is laid on extra thick so that the German soldiers looking for the "king" can't see him behind all the smoke.

Posted by Bishops Finger (# 5430) on :

Yes indeed - it's Granny Tucker in Moonfleet, 'who knew not A from B, [but] made much ado in fumbling with her book, for she would have people think that she could read'.

Once again, the rather down-trodden Parson Glennie is portrayed with some sympathy and respect, perhaps because the author (John Meade Falkner 1858-1932) was himself the son of a country clergyman.

My, my - what an erudite and well-read lot we are!

On a slightly different note, Walter Macken's novel Sunset On The Window Panes describes an anticipated apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary in rural Ireland. The apparition fails to materialise - or does it? You have to read the book yourself to decide whether it actually does or not!

IJ

Posted by Bishops Finger (# 5430) on :

Dear me, Miss Amanda. I really think you need to take a course of reading Wholesome and Edifying books....

IJ

Posted by Pangolin Guerre (# 18686) on :

In film, George Carlin in Dogma.

Rowan Atkinson's priest with the speech impediment in Four Weddings and a Funeral.

Bishop Finger, have I lowered the tone?

Posted by teddybear (# 7842) on :

So very happy to find this thread. I have been trying to remember the name of a book read when I was in my 20's. It was about the vicar or a small village church who was struggling with his bishop over having a tabernacle in the church. He was was well loved by his parishioners, even though they thought him odd. They would take turns showing up in church during the week, so the vicar was able to have daily celebration of the Eucharist. I think the book was written in maybe the 1930's? Between the wars any way. The author was a woman, who may or may not have converted to Catholicism at some point after the book was written? I don't think it was Sheila Kaye-Smith, but I could be wrong.

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Bishops Finger:
Yes indeed - it's Granny Tucker in Moonfleet, 'who knew not A from B, [but] made much ado in fumbling with her book, for she would have people think that she could read'.

Once again, the rather down-trodden Parson Glennie is portrayed with some sympathy and respect, perhaps because the author (John Meade Falkner 1858-1932) was himself the son of a country clergyman.

Falkner had a feel for the Church. He also wrote The Nebuly Coat , a novel about an architect who comes to restore an old church, and, of course, the poem After Trinity.

[ 03. February 2017, 05:03: Message edited by: Albertus ]

Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :

quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:

quote:
Originally posted by venbede:

The main part of the action in James Baldwin's Go Tell it on the Mountain
Would you recommend this novel? I've had it in mind for a long time.

I certainly would, although I have no intention of re-reading it for fun.

Although Baldwin rejected his religion and is highly critical of how some people use it, he is highly sympathetic and recognises how it can be a context for human love and bravery.

This also applies to his play The Amen Corner set in a similar church and at the London National Theatre in the last few years.

[ 03. February 2017, 07:26: Message edited by: venbede ]

Posted by betjemaniac (# 17618) on :

To boost the film side of things, there's of course the excellent morning prayer on the beach in Dunkirk - Bernard Lee gets killed during the Lord's Prayer. One of the most moving scenes in cinema for me.

If you go back to pre WW2, Michael Powell's The Edge of the World, a docudrama based on the evacuation of St Kilda, is not only a beautiful use of celluloid, but also has a church service which must these days approach the level of historical document for how people did things in the far flung Scottish isles before the evacuations.

Re Svitlana's point about British nonconformist literature, I think it would be worth reading Mary Webb's novel Gone to Earth, the Powell and Pressburger film of which I mentioned back on page 1.

In addition, nonconformity runs (IMO) through the novels of RF Delderfield like a stick of rock, particularly the Horseman Riding By trilogy, one of the subplots of which is the struggle of the rural Devon nonconformist Liberals against the Tory establishment.

It also plays a part in Francis Brett Young's novels (sorry to bring him up again on here but sometimes I feel like a lone propagandist for a forgotten master), particularly off the top of my head in The Black Diamond which has some good chapel services.

Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :

quote:
Originally posted by betjemaniac:
To boost the film side of things, there's of course the excellent morning prayer on the beach in Dunkirk - Bernard Lee gets killed during the Lord's Prayer. One of the most moving scenes in cinema for me.

And the - shall we say? - irreverent Church Parade in "Oh, what a lovely war!"

Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :

I have, running through my head, an appalling chapel scene in an American film from the days when films were made with black casts for the black audience. It was called, I think "Chapel in the sky" and the plot was one I have seen in a Bollywood film - the pious mother continues to pray for her reprobate son until he comes back to the fold. The congregation was mostly female, and as many were what we would now called mixed race (from Sinclair Lewis' "It Can't Happen Here" I now learn they could have been as little as one sixteenth black to count as fully so) there were women who could slot into my family unnoticed. (Not that we have any record of any black people back as far as we have looked. I expect they are there, though.) And when the ex-drinker, gambler and womaniser turned up, they sang a song I cannot imagine the extras felt happy about.
"Little Black Sheep, come on home,
Wash that fleece much whiter than foam."
I know it's got the history and tradition behind it, but didn't anyone think?

Posted by betjemaniac (# 17618) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:

quote:
Originally posted by betjemaniac:
To boost the film side of things, there's of course the excellent morning prayer on the beach in Dunkirk - Bernard Lee gets killed during the Lord's Prayer. One of the most moving scenes in cinema for me.
And the - shall we say? - irreverent Church Parade in "Oh, what a lovely war!"

I do occasionally find myself resisting the urge to sing the "other" words to the Church's One Foundation....

Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :

And "What a friend we have in Jesus".

Posted by Hedgehog (# 14125) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
The congregation was mostly female, and as many were what we would now called mixed race (from Sinclair Lewis' "It Can't Happen Here" I now learn they could have been as little as one sixteenth black to count as fully so) there were women who could slot into my family unnoticed.

[tangent]If you thought one-sixteenth was bad, check out the"one-drop rule" that any "black blood" in a person made them black.

And then watch Show Boat (1936) in which that rule is given an interesting twist. The show boat arrives in a southern town and the sheriff is coming to arrest the two stars because he has heard that they are in an illegal interracial marriage because the wife had "black blood" in her. Before the sheriff gets there, the husband rushes to his wife, slices open her palm and sucks on the bleeding hand, just so that the ship captain can honestly swear that, to his own knowledge, the husband also "has black blood" in him and, therefore, it was not an illegal interracial marriage.[/tangent]

Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :

There is a good Revival meeting in the play "Dark of the Moon". My son did it at school.

Also a scene in Carlisle Floyd’s opera "Susannah" which I saw a few years ago. It's rarely done in Briain but often performed in the USA.

Much more recently, there is a Georgian "society" service at New York's Trinity Church is Francis Spufford's "Golden Hill".

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

There's some fine revival meetings in Guys & Dolls but I don't feel they're very realistic. The original Damon Runyon stories were only loosely based upon reality, and the transition to the musical stage loosed the tie even more.

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Pangolin Guerre:
Why it stuck with me, God only knows, but when I was 12 we read Moonfleet in English class. There are church scenes, but the one that stayed with me describes an old woman in church, pretending to be literate (but holds the book incorrectly?).

I remember it well - but more so the sound of casks of contraband spiits bumping together in the crypt.

I went to school only a few miles from Fleet, where the book is set.

Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :

quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
I certainly would [recommend 'Go Tell it on the Mountain'], although I have no intention of re-reading it for fun.

Thanks for that. I'd imagined that it was probably very good, but not a barrel of fun.

In perhaps a similar vein, Alice Walker's 'The Colour Purple' also contains a church scene, in which a sinful women returns hoping for forgiveness. The film version is moving but I've forgotten what it's like in the book.

Posted by Signaller (# 17495) on :

For a record of the old way of doing things, it would be hard to beat the Whit-Sunday service in 'Went the Day Well', when the Germans burst into the church during the 'Veni Creator Spiritus'.

The post-blitz service in 'Mrs Miniver', on the other hand, takes place in one of the least convincing sets ever mocked up.

Posted by Fr Weber (# 13472) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe:
No one has yet mentioned the "Marilyn Monroe Cathedral" scene in the movie version of The Who's Tommy, where a statue of Marilyn Monroe is a thinly disguised substitute for the Blessed Virgin.

Eric Clapton on guitar is the worship leader, who sings "Eyesight to the Blind" as sidesmen in Marilyn Monroe drag and masks direct the faithful up to the rail with a "You! C'm here!" gesture.

At the rail, people in wheelchairs touch the hem of Marilyn's dress ("If I could only touch the hem of his garment") and then are wheeled away by their caretakers to await the miracle cure.

Of course, when deaf, dumb and blind Tommy is led up, the statue comes crashing down to the ground when he touches it.

You may have forgotten to mention the priest (played by Arthur Brown), who moves down the line distributing pills and a chalice (making extravagant cruciform blessing gestures all the while).

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :

Mention of 'Went the Day Well' reminds me of this, although it's not exactly a church service.

Posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe (# 5521) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Fr Weber:
You may have forgotten to mention the priest (played by Arthur Brown), who moves down the line distributing pills and a chalice (making extravagant cruciform blessing gestures all the while).

I did forget that, but your mentioning it has brought it back. It's been a long time since I last saw Tommy.

Posted by Spike (# 36) on :

I don't know if anyone else has noticed this, but whenever a drama has a scene in a Welsh church or chapel, the congregation always seem to be singing Cwm Rhondda. Don't film or TV people think they sing anything else in Wales?

Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :

I suppose they want to have TV congregations singing something that viewers recognise; and in such cases, something that non-Welsh viewers recognise as Welsh.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

The filmic form demands condensation and 'signalling' rather than accuracy. Have you ever noticed in movie funerals (Batman's parents, Spider-Man's Uncle Ben, etc.) how the rites seem to be Catholic? And always graveside. The priest is fully robed, and there's always hymnal music scored under. They're saying 'funeral, Bruce Wayne is very sad' rather than making any doctrinal statement.

Posted by Fr Weber (# 13472) on :

There's an embarrassing moment in Twin Peaks at Laura Palmer's funeral, when the clergyman begins by saying "The Lord be with thee" (there is more than one person present).

Posted by betjemaniac (# 17618) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
Mention of 'Went the Day Well' reminds me of this, although it's not exactly a church service.

Borrowed quite a bit from WTDW IMO - as, indeed, did The Eagle has Landed.

Nasty (in a good way) little film is WTDW, with a great Graham Greene screenplay and fine direction by Alberto Cavalcanti.

Some bits just stay with you though. The church is one of them, but I can still see the scene where the lady of the manor picks up the grenade from the floor of the evacuees bedroom and walks out onto the landing with it... For a film starring Thora Hird, it doesn't pull any of its punches.

Posted by Bishops Finger (# 5430) on :

Just popping in to say 'Thank you' to whoever recommended Mrs. Oliphant's The Perpetual Curate.

Mr. eBay kindly sent me a copy (appropriately, perhaps, one published by Virago Classics), and I am presently enjoying reading it - to the extent that I shall probably seek out the rest of Mrs. Oliphant's Chronicles of Carlingford.

Very readable, with a gentle touch, and by no means so prolix as Dickens or George Eliot can sometimes be.

IJ

Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :

I found Mrs Oliphant's Hester fascinating, but a slower read than Dickens. Also Miss Majoribanks.

I've got Salem Chapel on order and looking forward to it. I couldn't find The Perpetual Curate on my favourite Abebooks but I have it in mind.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

I daresay they're on Project Gutenberg -- looks like something I'll have to read after I work through all of Gaskell.

Posted by georgiaboy (# 11294) on :

I dug out Crispin's Fen books last night to refresh my memories.

In 'Holy Disorders' there is a 'black mass' presided over by a Nazi sympathizer priest. Not a lot of details given, but the ones there seem accurate. Lots of action around Tolnbridge cathedral, but no services. Fave line of all: in a telegram Fen says 'Come down and play the cathedral services, someone is killing all the organists. Don't know why, the music isn't that bad.'

In 'The Case of the Gilded Fly' there is the remarkable Evensong in Judas (sic) Chapel, Oxford, in which the organist is murdered between the anthem and the retiring hymn, an important clue is the stops which the organist had left drawn.

Crispin (aka Bruce Montgomery) was a talented composer and IIRC an Oxford man, so there is great attention to musical details throughout the books.

Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
I daresay they're on Project Gutenberg -- looks like something I'll have to read after I work through all of Gaskell.

She wrote c100 novels.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

We must be thinking of different authors; I am thinking of Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, author of Ruth, North and South, Wives and Daughters and so on. Wikipedia lists her with only 5 novels.

Posted by Tree Bee (# 4033) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
We must be thinking of different authors; I am thinking of Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, author of Ruth, North and South, Wives and Daughters and so on. Wikipedia lists her with only 5 novels.

Ten novels, a few NF and many collections of short stories listed by her in Fantastic Fiction.

Posted by Niminypiminy (# 15489) on :

Glad to hear The Perpetual Curate is finding new admirers.

Meanwhile I've remembered there's a church scene in To Kill a Mockingbird - the children go to Calpurnia's church. I don't remember much about it except that the psalm is given out line by line.

We've probably already mentioned the wonderful outdoor preaching scene in George Eliot's Adam Bede.

Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
We must be thinking of different authors; I am thinking of Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, author of Ruth, North and South, Wives and Daughters and so on. Wikipedia lists her with only 5 novels.

I understory you to mean you would investigate Maraget Oliphant after you finished Elizabeth Gaskell. Mrs O did indeed write lots, but everything I've read by her is worthwhile.

Posted by Fr Weber (# 13472) on :

The classic Black Mass scene in literature is the one in Huysmans' La-Bas. It thoroughly creeped me out.

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