ABSTRACT
The distinctive architecture in the modern Western world is seen by non-Muslims in the neighbourhood as a threat to their own sense of belonging and self-identity. This chapter offers a brief survey of politics and religion interacting, initially in the Classical world within which Christianity came to birth, and then at two significant points in that religion's subsequent history. There is good evidence to suggest that quite a few of the original elements in Classical architecture had disturbing origins in allusions to sacrifice. Christians often express regret at such lack of purity of intention, but to my mind the more interesting question, as with the Classical world, is whether religious symbolism in the end achieves its purpose, whatever primary influence may initially have come from politics. Two periods subsequent to the collapse of the Roman Empire may be used to illustrate the complexity of the relations between politics and Christian architecture: eleventh-century Norman England and nineteenth-century Scotland.
