Philosophy

“And bless thine Inheritance”: Sacred Heritage, Theology, and Imagination

In places like Canterbury, sacred sites become thresholds where past, present, and future converge, inviting us to perceive the divine as present in the world’s beauty and human imagination.

Canterbury Cathedral by Arthur C. Payne, from a postcard

If we choose to see it, Canterbury is an open invitation to meditate on how the divine may be encountered in place, beauty, and the sublime yearnings of human imagination and skill. Think of the transcendent cathedral, the ruins of St Augustine’s Abbey, that ancient site of prayer, devotion and learning destroyed by the Reformation, and St Martin’s, the oldest church in England still in ecclesiastical use.

Here heritage calls on us to envision a world transfigured by Something Else, a numinous presence shining in and through what surrounds us.

This spiritual or religious heritage does not primarily have to do with the past. It is in fact a view of a hoped-for future; the future glimpsed here and now. It is a vision of what we shall or may inherit, and already partially possess in the world around us. It is not yet, but it is there. It is the not yet in the here and now. It is Paradise, but here on Earth - here in East Kent.

This vision is available to anyone with the eyes to see. One does not have to be a Christian. It is poetic and mythic and imaginal and always about to be and is.

Seen this way the places and landscapes we inhabit may be spaces where past, present and longed-for future converge, sites where we participate in the divine and where the divine participates in humans and in the world. Sites where we may experience constant and world-sustaining divine creativity and collaborate in it. Sites of poesis, where heaven and earth are reconciled, becoming one.

In July, a group of eminent academics, heritage experts, priests and poets will gather in Canterbury for a two-day conference to consider these and many other related topics, with particular though not exclusive reference to East Kent.
They will explore spaces of sacred and saintly imagination, East Kent as a place of mnemonic convergence, the role of poetic vision in maintaining the sacralisation of a place, and what happens when the relics of a saint are discovered in a Folkestone church. They will ask what happens when heritage fractures, and just whose values it may or may not embody. All this and hops and ale, too.

The conference, which I have helped to organise, is called “And bless thine inheritance”: Towards a Critical Theology of Heritage.
It is free to attend, takes place on 13 and 14 July, and can be booked via Canterbury Christ Church University’s Events page (where you can also find more information):

If this has whetted your appetite or sparked your imagination, please do come along.

Dr Simon Wilson is a Senior Lecturer at Canterbury Christ Church University, and a member of the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies at Cambridge. He has a special interest in landscape, co-creation, love of learning, spirituality, and the true nature of sustainability.
Simon is also part of the Bicerin family, and together with Edward Breen and Antonello Mirone hosts the "Something Different" Podcast.