In my village there’s a beautiful, tiny old church that dates to the 13th century. Its chalk-white wooden ceilings are adorned with red flowers, a gift to all those who lift their heads in wonder. It has the capacity to seat no more than 40; its miniature proportions make it look like a lacquered boxed trinket that was just dropped onto the green felt of the fields.
At the end of last year, the church, called All Saints, was threatened with closure. The vicar was preaching to a skeleton congregation, and the disconcerting silence that filled the church was its very own death rattle.
Fast forward a few months, however, and the church doors are still open, albeit with reduced hours: only for the first Sunday of every month and for significant religious days. It has been kept alive by the people of the local community, including myself. The idea that something that existed long before the British arrived in America could suddenly disappear felt egregious to us. We felt history about to slip through our fingers like sand. How could we let this happen? The church had watched over the people in the village for centuries, bearing witness to societal changes—until it came across one change that threatened its own existence.
The funny thing is that many of the people who battled to keep All Saints open—and who now sit within its pews—are atheists. As are many of the volunteers who clean it once a month. Churches are beautiful buildings, and you don’t need to believe in God to feel the unique solemnity they command within their walls. But is there an appeal that goes beyond the aesthetic for the non-believer?
Perhaps we can find an explanation in the teachings of Blaise Pascal, the 17th-century French philosopher and mathematician. Pascal’s Wager is the idea that it’s better to believe in God’s existence and have the chance to receive heavenly glory than not to believe and suffer eternity in hell. If God does exist, you have gained much. If he doesn’t, you’ve lost nothing. But I don’t think this is why All Saints remains open.
My theory is that community and togetherness are sacrosanct in their own right, and that churches are places where people gather and, for a short time, sing from the same hymn sheet. It’s a place of welcome reprieve from the constant dissent that characterises our polarised world. Even those of us who don’t believe in God recognise that this small spring of peace needs to be protected.
During the March service, in a moment of prayer, I looked up at the congregation. I saw a sea of lowered heads, people looking as vulnerable as the newly born lambs springing across the fields outside. I wondered what the believers were praying for, while acknowledging that the atheists were probably not praying at all. And yet we all shared this nurturing and fertile space in silence.
There in the pews I realised this small stone building from the 13th century was emblematic of something essential to the human experience: solitude bound by togetherness. A kind of communal aloneness that transcends religion. And to deprive the villagers of that would be sacrilegious.
