St Thomas' Church, Stockport

St Thomas’ Church in Stockport boasts several distinctions. The first is that it is a so-called Waterloo Church, built with funds provided by Parliament via the Church Commissioners, as both an act of gratitude to God for having defeated Napoleon in 1815, and to address the spiritual state of the nation and its national church in those long wars' aftermath.

The second is its architect, Elias George Basevi, FRS, who built it between 1822 and 1825. Basevi, as his rather exotic sounding-name indicates, was Jewish. The son of a City merchant, his family were of Sephardic origin, and were members of the Bevis Marks Synagogue in London, which still meets. I suspect, but cannot corroborate, that he had some kind of conversion to the Church of England prior to his submitting designs for Anglican churches. There is something rather winsome in a physical descendant of Abraham having a hand in designing a place of worship for his spiritual descendants, those who were grafted into Israel by grace rather than blood.

The third is the design itself. Far from making his design redolent of the synagogue or Jerusalem’s great sanctuary, St Thomas’ rear resembles an ancient Greek temple. Basevi had trained with John Soane, and then spent three years studying in Greece and Rome. This clearly honed his taste for the classical, which by the 1820s was still ‘in’ but soon to be elbowed aside by revived gothic.

Some writers describe the Acts of the Apostles as ‘From Jerusalem to Athens and Rome’, or from 'Jews to Gentiles'. Although we can trace much of the theological debates in the early church to the classical world’s readjustment to the new Christian values, we can also detect that vital link with the Hebrew world, from which the patriarchs, prophets and the promises came. And not forgetting Jesus Himself, of course, born a Jew under the Law.

So here is a Jewish architect building in Greek style for a Christian people to worship the Creator through Jesus Christ.

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. Galatians 3:28