Copyright: © 2000 Paul F. Bosch.
This document may be freely reproduced for non-commercial purposes with credit to the author and mention of the Lift Up Your Hearts web site http://www.worship.ca/ as the source.

The altar is another of the chief architectural signs in Christian worship.

As with most signs and symbols, the altar is first of all utilitarian: it is the family table around which the Christian community gathers to share the bread and cup in the Lord's Supper. To refer to the altar as "the table," therefore, is quite appropriate; some Christian communities prefer the term "table" to "altar." The term "altar" however is also suitable, since this word carries associations of sacrifice and sacrament appropriate to its use: our own "sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving," and the sacramental gift of God in Christ in the bread and cup. I'd use the terms Altar and Table interchangeably with considerable freedom. And, in the smallest, most intimate worship spaces, an altar- table is all the furniture you need: the scriptures could be read from it, and the sermon preached from it. There's ample precedence for that, dating back to the house-church of the primitive Christian community.

That said, however, it would be important to utilize the altar/table, in most of our current worship spaces, exclusively for the purpose it is meant to serve: as family table for the Holy Supper. It is not appropriate, for example, to use the altar at services of worship other than the Holy Communion, such as Matins, Vespers, or Service of the Word. The table should be used only for services of Holy Communion; and then only at the Offertory and thereafter. To reserve the table exclusively for its intended use is to train our sensibilities in appreciation of the primary experience we crave; and to train our sensibilities in the principles of what might be called "ritual clarity": see Essay 5 by that name, above.

Further: Since the Second Vatican Council, church architects, liturgists, and worship leaders, in all Christian denominations, have grown to cherish what has been called a "one-room" worship space -- one without a discernable "chancel" -- in preference, that is, to a "two-room" worship space, with "chancel" and "nave" each clearly defined. Put in other terms: A "one-room" configuration encourages worshippers to perceive the entire worship space as "chancel", where we, each and all, pastors and people, ordained and lay, take our assigned roles "on stage."

Further still: A "one-room" worship space both allows and indeed encourages graceful worship leadership from any one of several locations: see the paragraphs on "Posture, Position and Gesture" in Essay 34, and Essays 32 and 33 ("Architecture Always Wins...").

The altar/table should also command a certain reverence from worship leaders and people. It is a symbol of the sacrifice of Christ -- many altars have the shape of a tomb, and indeed were constructed over the actual tombs of saints in antiquity. So you will not want to lean your elbows on the altar, nor use the altar as a repository for hymnbooks, pamphlets, or service bulletins. The sacramental vessels and linens and the Presider's "altar book" are the only items that should be visible at the Table during Holy Communion; additional hymnbooks, pamphlets and service bulletins are simply out of place there, and betray an unbecoming carelessness in worship leaders. The day's worship bulletin/guide-to-worship can be hidden out of sight, but accessible, inside the front or back cover of the Presider's "altar book".

The altar will be free-standing, and indeed centrally-located, where it's possible. And where it's not possible -- where the building's altar has been bolted permanently to the "east" wall -- it could be altogether ignored, and a temporary Table moved in front of it, allowing the pastor to preside versus populum, facing the people across the Table: the so-called "basilican position".

Then the temporarily-re-configured space could await further, more permanent re-configuring, when sufficient resources become available, and sufficient congregational consensus has developed, by familiarity with the temporary.

One qualification to the above: I wouldn't "altogether ignore" that old altar bolted to the "east" wall. With a free-standing Table in front of it, I'd use the "high altar" perhaps as a credence, and even perhaps honour it with candles and flowers. But the new, free-standing Table, not the old east-wall altar, would be the centre and focus of ritual action. A free-standing altar, with "basilican" presiding, was Luther's personal preference. Versus populum presiding was the universal practice of the early church; it has always been the Pope's prerogative in St.Peter's, Rome; and it is familiar today in Reformed worship. So a free-standing altar, with the pastor facing the people across the Table, represents a tradition that is at once "primitive, Papal, and Presbyterian", as a friend maintains. There's not a lot in Christian history of which that claim can be made!

Many altars, in many of our present churches, furthermore, are simply too big: too long, too wide. Beside suggesting an un- becoming triumphalism, such monumental altars are often awkward to use; they are out of scale in the spaces they occupy, and sometimes actively impede ritual action. And the altar/table's height? I remember this doggerel from Seminary days:

Three-foot-three,
or three-foot-four:
Nothing less, and
nothing more.

It could be argued -- I myself would be willing to argue -- that Reformation principles about, for example, the "priesthood of all believers," have never been fully applied to church architecture until our own day, and then only widely since Vatican II.

In fact, I would be willing to argue --I have argued! See Essay 2 above.-- that re-configured "one-room" Roman Catholic church buildings, world-wide, are, today, more sympathetic to Reformation piety than most so-called Protestant churches, which remain, for the most part, in most parts of the world, stubbornly, exasperatingly un-re-configured "two-room" spaces. See Essay 27, "Ghostly Science...".