Clergy and children alike took turns sliding down a helter-skelter carnival ride that was constructed in the nave of the historic Norwich Cathedral for 11 days, prompting denunciation from some as Anglican pews continue to empty.
According to the cathedral, approximately 10,000 people visited to slide down the ride, dubbed the #SeeingItDifferently project. The Very Rev. Jane Hedges was the first to take the plunge, after which she said, “Our hope is that it will bring a very different audience into the cathedral.”
Rev. Canon Andy Bryant, who came up with the idea while visiting the Sistine Chapel, also maintained that the ride was intended to allow visitors the chance to better view the intricate details of the church’s ceiling, which depicts key biblical scenes from creation to the Apocalypse.
Some considered the attraction to be an irreverent and frivolous display that did not belong in the sacred space that has stood for a millennium.
“For such a place, steeped in mystery and marvel to buy in to sensory pleasure and distraction, is to poison the very medicine it offers the human soul,” the queen’s former chaplain, Rt. Rev. Dr. Gavin Ashenden, told the BBC.
Rt. Rev. Jonathan Meyrick, the bishop of Lynn, delivered a sermon from the ride last Sunday after sliding halfway down and singing a Bee Gees song. “God is a tourist attraction,” he expounded. “God wants to be attractive to us … for us to enjoy ourselves, each other and the world around us and this glorious helter-skelter is about just that.”
British journalist Peter Hitchens told the Washington Examiner that the carnival display is merely a symptom of a “tragedy [that] has already happened” in the Church of England. “Set beside the … abandonment of the 1662 Prayer Book and the Authorised Version of the Bible, and its collapse on the issue of lifelong marriage, a helter skelter is really pretty trivial.”
Portend? The tragedy has already happened. Set beside the C of E’s abandonment of the 1662 Prayer Book and the Authorised Version of the Bible, and its collapse on the issue of lifelong marriage, a helter skelter is really pretty trivial. https://t.co/1THcWt0iKT
— Peter Hitchens (@ClarkeMicah) August 25, 2019
One of the least altered examples of Norman architecture, Norwich Cathedral’s construction began a mere 30 years after the Norman Conquest of 1066.
The number of self-professed Christians in the United Kingdom has cratered by half in the past 35 years, while the population of Muslims and atheists has continued to rise. From 2012 to 2014 alone, the Church of England shed nearly 2 million adherents, prompting Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, to predict the institution is “one generation away from extinction.“
