Of tents and tabernacles: Church architecture, biblical authority, and the building of Anglican identity in the British Empire, 1840-1900

As the Church of England steadily enlarged its presence in Britain’s empire throughout the course of the nineteenth century, biblical authority was increasingly invoked not only as a means to evangelical justification but also as historic precedent. This was particularly the case with architecture. For Anglicans and Roman Catholics especially, church buildings were the embodiment of Christian teaching and theology. In a context where funding was scarce and challenges to Christian orthodoxy rife, clergymen and bishops often turned to biblical authority to convince parishioners of the necessity of dignified worship. This also applied to missionary contexts where architecture was used as a means to conversion, again citing specific references in scripture as a modus operandi. Moreover, as the mission field was seen as a highly competitive domain, Anglicans used architecture and ideas relating to the image of built form as a vehicle through which to express their identity, both confessional and national. Here, against the backcloth of the loss of the Thirteen Colonies over half a century earlier, the systematic inculcation of the Anglican faith was presented as a way of engendering loyalty amongst colonial populations and as a bulwark against potential foreign incursion. In this respect nationality and religion were seen as going hand in hand. Thus, the Church of England’s physical manifestation through church architecture was considered highly important, with the Gothic Revival itself carrying connotations symbolic of English (even British) nationhood and identity. This paper will explore these themes by way of specific examples drawn from across Britain’s former colonial empire during the second half of the nineteenth century.