which built his house upon a rock
Thoughts on something I found rather remarkable during a weekend away; also on encountering in three-dimensional form the argument of the book I happened to be reading. In the photograph is Wesley Hall in Whitby, opened in 1901, and my holiday reading (because I know how to have fun) was Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. In Whitby, I know, I know, I should have been reading Dracula.
When first built, Wesley Hall apparently provided the Methodists of Whitby with a space for a Sunday School and other such ancillary activities, but it later became their main place of worship when an adjacent chapel became too ramshackle for that purpose.
A closer view of the building reveals that it is covered in names, on larger ashlar details that decorate the brick facade,
on smaller ashlar details,
and (as initials) on individual bricks,
The names and initials self-evidently record financial contributions toward the construction of the Hall, donations large, medium and small. They decorate the front facade of the building and the right side as one looks at it, at least (I couldn’t see the left side), for a certain distance back from the road. The names are as a result clearly visible, and deliberately so, to anyone passing by the building.
As Weber was simultaneously informing me, this is all very characteristically Methodist, a religious philosophy that has always been comfortable with the acquisition of wealth, in a way similar to other low Protestant traditions (the theme of Weber’s book), so long as that wealth be put to good use. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, held to “the old Puritan doctrine that works are not the cause, but only the means of knowing one’s state of grace, and even this only when they are performed solely for the glory of God” (Weber tr. Parsons, p. 141). By doing good works you assure yourself that you are one of the elect. In the case of Wesley Hall, much of the funding for the building came from Robert Elliott Pannett, a Methodist solicitor who also bequeathed money for the building of an art gallery (now a gallery and town museum) in a park named after him in Whitby. His name features on one of the larger blocks.
Wesley Hall thus, it seems to me, expresses in architectural form in an unusually explicit way its religious principles, a building that advertises the individual acts of generosity that brought it into existence, and blazons for all to see the worthiness in the sight of God of each and every person named on it. The Hall has not housed the Methodists since the 1970s, and now contains a bar and restaurant, but the community who built it, and their faith, is celebrated for as long as it remains standing. I am not a Methodist; I am not even a believer. But I can’t help finding that arresting, and rather beautiful.
