If a parish uses chairs in the exact same way one might use pews, does it make any sense for the parishioners actively disparage pews? This seems to be a trend I've experienced in my travels in North America. Are pews fraught with a special, onerous symbolism that interlocking chairs aren't?
Friday, April 19, 2013
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Both are bad and should be phased out.
ReplyDeleteWe have benches around the perimeter of the nave but people mostly stand unless they have a physical need to sit or during the sermon. I've seen chairs and pews both around the perimeter. I assume you're specifically talking about rows of chairs?
ReplyDeleteThere isn't a church with interlocking chairs where I live, but I think one advantage it would have over pews is ease of removing them. Even places with pews do prostrations during Lent... But people have to move out into the aisle while doing them. Perhaps places with chairs move the chairs out of the way for the Lenten weekday services?
ReplyDeleteYes, this is what happens at my parish during Holy Week. I think chairs do help--especially if we have a serious interest in evangelizing in our western cultures. Many westerners (especially in the U.S.), are not accustomed to standing for long periods of time, and, as we know, whereas most of our ancestors labored in the field and walked everywhere, nowadays many of us have desk jobs, have to drive to get where we need to be, and on top of this are aging. It's a deterrent to regularly attending an Orthodox Church for some (who may otherwise want to do so) if there isn't a convenient or comfortable place to sit down when it becomes necessary to do so. Ascesis is something where we shouldn't expect everyone to be capable of taking on the same level of rigor, nor beginners to accomplish the same as those who been working at it for all their lives! Chairs do have some definite advantages over pews when it comes to flexibility, both in terms of being able to remove them for Lenten and Holy Weeks services and also in terms of accommodating people at all levels of practice throughout the year.
DeleteWhen considering what our attitude ought to be about such things, I remember one of the stories from the desert fathers something to the effect that a monk saw a fellow monk who rather than having a pallet for his bed on the hard floor in his cell like the other monks, instead had a modest mattress raised up off the floor on which to sleep. The monk was indignant wondering about the indulgence allowed his fellow monk until he found out that in his worldly life the other monk had been a wealthy man living in much luxury whereas he himself had been a peasant and would have slept on the floor even if living in the world. Then he understood that his fellow monk's ascesis was actually more rigorous than his own, for he had given up much more worldly comfort in order to become a monk.
Just the further americanization of the Orthodox church. Been going on a long time. In fact, I have only been in 1 Orthodox church that didn't have pews. It was a small ROCOR parish in Glendora California (church is gone now) but all the rest Antiochian, Greek, OCA , Romanian all had pews except the Cathedrals.
ReplyDeleteSoft Americans, can't be taken out of their comfort zones.
Matthew,
ReplyDeleteI'm not a fan of chairs, pews, &c. nor am I a fan of American Exceptionalism in the Church, but we need to be fair. You go to many temples in Europe & you get not an open nave, but rows of chairs. Take a look at pictures of St. George at the Phanar, St. George at Balamand, parishes throughout Athens--chairs. Like it or no, it's not a 'soft American' thing.
Sacramental healing takes places with all kinds of furniture.
ReplyDeletePews? No pews ? Yawn... One will most likely NOT be asked their POV on the Day of Judgment. One's attitude with respect to the question is likely to be "of interest."
ReplyDeleteSo few things fall under the "Pearly Gates test" to be sure. I'm just noting the strident tones on the topic that don't seem to make much sense considering the reality of the differences.
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