I can never walk past a church without going in. All the complexities of human life are inside

I remember being strangely drawn to churches as a teenager. It wasn’t because I was, then, particularly religious, nor do I think that I was nosier than most people – after all I didn’t feel the same compulsion to push open the doors of shops or libraries or random people’s houses and peek inside. But with churches I always did feel that urge that I couldn’t just walk past, I had to, even for five minutes, poke my head in.  

Soon I realised that this urge was time well spent, that church buildings were the most incredible collections of story. That their stones and monuments, their clutter and even just their atmosphere, could communicate across centuries. I realised that there was something very special about being in places where people had come with their hopes and fears, their joys and their tragedies, in short, all the complexities of human life, over many years.

I realised to that a building set aside for that most complex aspect of humanity of all – the search for the Divine – was always a place with stories and secrets. I always left them feeling glad I had gone in, and a little wiser for having done so.  

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All this is to say that I have been fascinated by churches and both the individual stories they tell  and the wider, deeper story they represent, for years. Finally, I’ve decided to write about them in Twelve Churches: An Unlikely History of the Buildings that Made Christianity. I suspect the desire to finally put pen to paper about these remarkable buildings was probably stimulated – ironically – by being unable to go to them for the first time I could remember.

One of the consequences of not only UK lockdowns but also the restrictions on international travel during Covid was that poking my head round the door of a church wasn’t possible anymore. And I found I missed them. 

That period also got me thinking about why churches are important now. In an age where many people date, order food, receive information go to work and have almost their entire social life over the medium of their laptop or phone, was there still a place for these amazing spaces. To work out whether they had a future, it meant delving into their history.  

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What I found was that churches have been the places where the story of Christianity unfolded. I learned from them, and the stories they hold, about how Christianity developed from a small group of believers in a far-off province of the Roman Empire into the idea that has influenced the shape of the modern world more than any other.

In various churches I learnt about how it developed and grew- from finding out about its encounters with political power in the majestic surroundings of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul or among the stone passageways of the rock churches of Ethiopia to learning about the development and evolution of its sexual ethics from a twinkly eyed monk on an isolated Greek mountain. 

Such a survey meant I saw the hight points and the low points, both of history and the present day. My spine still tingles as I think back to my experience in Salem, Massachusetts, looking at the remains of the house where the first accusations of witchcraft began to fly and which led to so many innocent people being killed in the name of the faith.

But I also learned, speaking to Pastor Price of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, of Christianity’s incredible capacity to not only inspire people to strive for justice but to create places where people can have the courage and strength to forgive.  

I learned not only about the story of Christianity’s clashes with the forces of profit or violence but also about individuals. I learned about Eilward of Westoning, castrated during a misunderstanding about a stolen cloak, who swore that the shrine of Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral had restored his testicles, and generously promised to show anyone who didn’t believe him.

I learned about the Mad Caliph, Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, who though he banned women’s shoes and made the cooking of a particular casserole punishable by death, still spared the Church of the Nativity, where it all began, from destruction. And, through the story of a tiny hidden Christian shrine on the wild coastline of Japan, I learned about Magdalene of Nagasaki, a teenaged girl who showed more courage and faith than a thousand samurai. 

This book tells some of those stories, and, through them tells the story of Christianity, how it became what it is and how it shaped our world today. Every church is full of stories, interesting, weird and wonderful, sometimes profoundly moving in their own way, but even more so, and even more fascinating, when you realise they’re part of a much bigger story, the story of humanity grappling with God. It was such a privilege to learn more about these people and places. One thing is for sure, I will never walk past any church, of any description, without poking my head in. 

Twelve Churches: An unlikely history of the buildings that made Christianity by Fergus Butler-Gallie is out now (Hodder & Stoughton, £20).

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