St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, King William’s Town, Eastern Cape Province, South Africa
St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, King William’s Town, Eastern Cape Province, South Africa
St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, King William’s Town, Eastern Cape Province, South Africa
St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, King William’s Town, Eastern Cape Province, South Africa
St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, King William’s Town, Eastern Cape Province, South Africa
Church Architecture Worldwide
Welcome!
My formal training is in church history, but I have had an interest in architectural drafting in particular since my teenage years. While teaching church history, I enjoy incorporating church architecture because this helps provide a great contextual and tangible way to learn the history of Christianity. Buildings allow one to talk about the people, their leaders, and the congregations who built them, their context in history, their worship principles, and the liturgical forms they employed. Also, buildings often change with the generations and thus also show perhaps the incorporation of new peoples, changes in worship perspectives, and liturgical forms.
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My educational research work in my arts degree included learning about the Scottish emigrants to British North America under Lord Selkirk and their built heritage. My research for my Master of Theology at Glasgow University was in the 16th-century and Reformed churches, both Continental and Scottish; and my Ph.D. research from the University of Wales, concentrated upon 16th to 19th-century European, and particularly Scottish, theological education and training.
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I have enjoyed participating in the Institute for Architectural Studies and Conservation, PEI, giving lectures in ecclesiastical architecture, some tours, editing in the field, and also in the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada, of which I am a member.
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This website contains images and brief descriptors to identify the building, its location, date, style, and some distinctive details on occasion. The text has been kept to a minimum. I believe each image group can become an invaluable teaching portal into church history – to allow one to think about the leaders, the people, their worship, their liturgy. One can learn much about church history through church architecture.
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The site does concentrate upon church buildings generally in the Presbyterian/Reformed family of churches, but not exclusively. Additional articles and links to publications are also included and updated periodically.
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Thank you for visiting.
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– Jack C. Whytock