Bishop Street Chapel, Leicester

Bishop Street Methodist Church in Leicester calls its architecture Regency (1815), which is a neat term for later Georgian. Its symmetry and use of straight lines I find rather attractive and is much better style for chapels than gothic revival which later Victorians preferred, with all its pointed arches and unnecessary towers.

I cannot vouch for this individual church’s witness, though the wider denomination of which it is part shrivels with each new departure from Christian orthodoxy. Our buildings’ use of straight lines and symmetry is a matter of taste, but the straightness of our theology, its submission to the truth of God’s word, the Bible, and our acceptance or rejection of that which is warped and crooked, is vital.

And I will bring the blind by a way that they knew not; I will lead them in paths that they have not known: I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight. These things will I do unto them, and not forsake them. Isaiah 42:16

A. D