Strip the pews from a church, and you take away the magic

How miserably Welby-ist. Not content with broadcasting an Easter service from the Archbishop of Canterbury’s kitchen, the Church of England has sunk further into the depths of banality by ruling that a 16th-century rural church in Leicestershire must now rip out its pews and replace them with padded seating.

Pews are said to be uncomfortable – but isn’t that the point? The Book of Common Prayer invites us to make our humble confession to Almighty God meekly kneeling upon our knees – not sprawled on the upholstery of a living room. Call me old fashioned, but churches are special places, set aside for worship and reflection. Even nonbelievers feel the thrill of sanctity when they enter. Take away the pews and the magic goes.

I can see the objection, of course. Strip out the pews and a church can be used as a multi-purpose function barn, for a variety of income-generating events. How often, though, is a whole church used as a Pilates studio or amateur dramatics hall? Usually additional uses can be accommodated at the back or in a chapel. Elsewhere, pews should be kept for their sheer functionality.

You can pack a lot of people into a pew; they’re equipped with hassocks for the knees, sometimes lovingly embroidered by past members of the congregation: a token of the care and affection that the church has attracted over centuries. And they stop you falling asleep.

Critics of the pew sometimes say that it’s a recent introduction. If that’s so, they have long memories. Pews started to arrive in the late Middle Ages. Seating was introduced in East Anglia and the West Country from around 1300 as a sign of affluence. Until then, all parish occasions, including markets, took place in the open space of the church nave, which was – and had to be – unencumbered. (The only seating was a stone bench attached to the wall; congregations either stood or kneeled during worship, the only exceptions being made for the old or infirm, who, as the weakest, “went to the wall”.) Fortunately, churches which were rich enough to install pews could also afford halls for other activities. Many churches still have halls, so why remove the pews?

The question is partly aesthetic: stackable chairs don’t have to be ugly but those in churches are usually dreadful. They evoke the office and other secular environments. More profoundly, it’s a matter of what moves the congregation to identify with the church building as a sacred space. People go to church for many reasons, because the religious emotion is complex.

Faith and piety are among them, but so too is the memory of what many of us did as children. We want to reaffirm our relationship to the traditions of our forefathers. That in itself is a comfort – and on a good day, with the right music, you may have a glimpse of the divine.

Many modern vicars like padded, stackable seats because they’re usually only in place for a few years, before moving on to another parish. They want to refresh the C of E brand. Faith for them is a given. But by chucking out the pews they alienate those of us for whom churches should express permanence.

Office-style seating is part of the restless, constantly changing society we try to escape when we settle, backbone stiffened, somnolence at bay, in the pew.