Nashville is frequently called “The Athens of the South” and “Music City,” but “The Protestant Vatican” and “The City of Churches” are equally appropriate, if less common, nicknames. With its 700 or so established denominational buildings—by some accounts, the highest per capita of any city in the United States—Nashville really does seem to have a church on every corner. Most of these are architecturally conservative affairs, featuring colonial spires, classic columns or unfortunate bank-like prefabrication. The result is an illusion of religious homogeneity that demands to be dispelled.
Contrary to the fundamentalist ideology that pervades so much American thinking at the moment, religions are not inherently good or evil, nor do they exist in a vacuum. It’s as true of Christianity as it is of Islam or Buddhism—and Nashville’s Downtown Presbyterian Church, one of our city’s oldest and best-known houses of Protestant worship, vividly exemplifies the nature of religious adaptation and interrelativity. Drawing its architectural inspiration from pagan sources, the church proves that Christianity is indeed a flexible, changing religion—one that has to continually make room for new ideas, whether iconographic or theological. With its utterly unique design and its progressive ministry, Downtown Presbyterian offers proof that Christianity has never been observed any one particular way in our city.
During the mid 1800s, the congregation at the corner of Spring and Summer Streets (now Fifth Avenue and Church Street) needed to replace its building. Established in 1814, the First Presbyterian Church, as it was then known, had seen its two previous structures destroyed by fire. To build their third, the members turned to renowned Philadelphia architect William Strickland, who had recently completed Tennessee’s state capitol building, a Grecian temple of democracy that stood only a few blocks away.
At the time, the colorful Romantic Movement was still spurring the popular imagination, and the emerging science of archaeology inspired great interest in all things Egyptian. Along with a fixation on mummy cases, sphinxes, pyramids and hieroglyphics, this taste for the exotic also influenced the architecture of the day. The downtown congregation had no interest in rehashing the capitol building’s classic form, so Strickland instead presented a design in the daring Egyptian Revival style. The structure was completed in 1851.
Though its substantial brick towers, winged suns, palm tree columns and extravagantly stenciled walls are breathtaking, Downtown Presbyterian’s most notable feature is its almost complete lack of overt Christian symbolism. Even with the recent restoration in honor of the building’s 150th anniversary, a small cross on the communion table designed by Nashville printmaker Lucius DuBose is the only obvious concession to traditional ecclesiasticism—and it too is adorned with Egyptian imagery. Despite pressure from more conservative worshipers, the congregation has maintained and, in fact, furthered the architectural integrity of the building, glibly labeled “Karnak on the Cumberland.”
“It’s still a struggle,” says Downtown Presbyterian’s associate pastor, Rev. Linda White. “We have people come in here and say, 'How can you worship in this place? There are no Christian symbols!’ There are some people who do not feel the way they want to feel when they’re in this sanctuary. But one of the pitfalls of Christian theology is that people want to be safe, and I’m not sure that Christianity is meant to be a safe way to live. The church needs creativity; it needs a way to think about truth that’s not always safe. Art and architecture are part of every worship service here, and that forces interpretation.”
The Downtown Church’s unique design informs its mission as well as its theology, and its diverse population includes many of Nashville’s disenfranchised. Each week, White presides over the church’s Wednesday Congregation, which provides lunch and a spiritual home for as many as 200 of Nashville’s homeless. The church’s third-floor attic also houses a small colony of local artists whose volunteer work and aesthetic energy serve in exchange for studio space.
Recently, the church hosted its annual DIG (Dialogue: An Interaction for Growth) conference, a combination art show, rock concert and film festival that explores the intersection of art and faith. This year’s event, titled “Icons & Idols,” was the church’s fifth and featured the works of 30 local artists, a screening of the 1983 film Koyaaniqatsi and a performance by Christian-tinged atmospheric rockers Over the Rhine.
“The arts have permeated our education,” says White, “and there’s a richness to what happens here that we wouldn’t have if we worshiped in a building that had sleek, contemporary religious overtones. I think about the word 'sanctuary’ in the tradition, and it means that something different is going on here than what’s outside the walls. According to Scripture, Egypt was a sanctuary from Herrod’s wrath for Jesus and his family, and sanctuaries are not built for insiders; that’s how I use the architecture to encourage and remind me.”
It’s the fact that we view the world through Western eyes that makes Downtown Presbyterian’s Egyptology seem so far removed from the Christian tradition. You only need to look at an atlas to be reminded that Egypt and the birthplace of Christianity, Israel (then Judea), are adjoining states. If nothing else, Christianity is historically a religion of appropriation (or syncretism, to use the more precise term), and that extends to its architecture. Some of the earliest Christian worship services were held in Roman catacombs, and during the Reformation the iconoclastic Protestants gladly adapted elaborate Catholic cathedrals as their own.
But there’s an even more striking case to be made for Downtown Presbyterian’s unusual design: “Jesus’ first visual memories would have been of Egypt, because that’s where he was taken as a young boy,” says Downtown Presbyterian’s church historian and the chairman of its Spirituality and Arts Committee, Jim Hoobler. “And if you look at the standard Christian worship space, it’s based on the basilica—a secular pagan Roman law court. So take First Presbyterian on Franklin Pike, or Woodmont Baptist, or Vine St. Christian—if you think about it, they’re built from pagan designs too. Christian churches have always imposed their iconography over the old iconography; you sprinkle some holy water and convert it to your own use.”
