The Smashing of Idols

an approach to insomnia, and a special invitation.

I’m reading Bijan Omrani’s God is an Englishman: Christianity and the Creation of England, in preparation for a special interview I’m doing with him for Irreverend. I’ve got to the chapter ‘A Holy Landscape’ which is essentially a genealogy of sacred space in England in three parts:

First Part - The enchantment of the landscape and its shaping through Christianity. Various examples of this are given including churchyards being used for burials, first for monks and holy people and then for the laity more generally, the taking over of pagan sites of idolatrous worship for the use of Christian worship, sacred trees associated with felled saints, the relics of saints preserved at certain places and used as a focus for pilgrimage, and, of course, the division of the landscape into parishes, with parish churches and manor houses, that began around the eleventh century. In short, the land was held to constitute a multivalent play of spiritual forces, some dark, some light. The task of the Christian religion was to sanctify the land by driving back the darkness and claiming the territory for God.