Oh, putt for the grace of God?
The hallowed nave of a medieval church, with its stained glass windows and soaring arches, is usually thought of as a place for prayer and quiet reflection. Now, apparently, it is also a place for a slide four storeys tall.
This summer, visitors to some of England’s most imposing and ancient cathedrals are finding carnival rides, a mini-golf course, a lunar landscape and a lifelike model of the Earth dangling from the ceiling.
Inside Norwich Cathedral in the east of England, a colourful, 17-metre-tall slide, known as a helter-skelter, winds past the12th-century stone pillars. The Rev. Canon Andy Bryant, Norwich’s canon for mission, said it offered visitors a new perspective on the ornate ceilings and on the faith more generally.
“This is a deliberate attempt to help people engage with our cathedral,” he said. “There is this idea that the helter-skelter makes it all brash and noisy, but people are going on to see the cathedral in all of its glory.”
After years of falling attendance for the Church of England, the amusement park atmosphere on display at some cathedrals shows the lengths the church is going to as it tries to pull in more people by projecting a more inclusive, less forbidding image.
Bryant said he was inspired to install the carnival slide after visiting the Sistine Chapel two years ago and admiring Michelangelo’s handiwork on the ceiling. It made him think of Norwich Cathedral’s own ceiling, adorned with medieval carvings called bosses that depict scenes from the Bible, and lament the fact that visitors could not see them close up.
Now, for about $3, people can climb to the top of the tower and take a slide down while admiring the church.
Services continue as normal, and this Sunday’s sermon will be delivered from atop the ride.
Bryant said the reception had been overwhelmingly positive since the tower was installed this month as part of “Seeing it Differently,” an 11-day event at the cathedral that includes several immersive installations. Comments on Norwich Cathedral’s social media accounts seem to support that idea, with dozens of positive posts applauding the installation.
“We are sharing our building with lots of new people and having conversations about faith,” Bryant said. “The cathedral is full of smiling, happy people.”
But not everyone has been smiling. One commenter on the cathedral’s Facebook page denounced it as “trivializing” and “spiritually bankrupt.”
The number of people who identify as members of the Church of England has dropped by more than half in recent years, to 14 per cent in 2018 from 31 per cent in 2002, according to figures from NatCen, a social research institute.
While Bryant said attendance numbers were strong at Norwich, and the installation there was simply about creating a space for reflection, it is part of a larger trend that has seen cathedrals try non-traditional activities to attract more people.