THE use of a votive-candle stand was not necessarily superstitious, and it would not be astute to detect superstition in the use of it, Chancellor Philip Petchey said in the Consistory Court of the diocese of Southwark last month, when granting a faculty for the introduction of a votive-candle stand next to the font, and for the Book of Remembrance currently occupying that position to be moved to the south wall.
The Team Rector of St Mary the Virgin, Wimbledon, the Revd Mary Bide, and two churchwardens applied for the faculty. In the statement of need, they said that the church currently had no votive stands, and that many visitors and members of the regular congregation had asked whether they could have a place where candles could be lit, either as an act of remembrance or to accompany a prayer for someone who was ill or in distress.
The PCC supported a proposal for a design that used night lights, which were less likely to drip than tall candles. The best position was considered to be where the Book of Remembrance was sited, because the floor was stone, and there were no inflammable objects close by.
St Mary’s is a Grade II* listed church. Parts of it date from the medieval period. No one had stated tha,t if there was to be a votive-candle stand, the proposed location was inappropriate, or that the proposed design for the stand was aesthetically objectionable.
Neither was it seriously suggested that it would pose an unacceptable fire risk, although the insurers had suggested some standard common-sense precautions. It was expected that those precautions would be observed.
As required by the Faculty Jurisdiction Rules 2000, the proposals were published on noticeboards inside and outside the church. There was one objection from Sonia Elkin, a member of the congregation for more than 45 years. She had served on several committees, as a member and secretary of the PCC, and as a churchwarden.
She objected to the argument that the gesture of lighting a candle in a church was in lieu of a prayer for the inarticulate. “Why”, she asked, “was a prayer, whether articulate or not, made valid by putting a coin in a box and lighting a night light?” It smacked of superstition, she said, and should be discouraged rather than the reverse.
People should be encouraged to sit quietly in church, and “have an opportunity to reflect and pray”, she said. Just “being there quietly can be a prayer in itself.” When a candle went out, “did God cease to notice?” she asked, when presumably he was “supposed to notice when it is lit”. She felt that lighting a candle had nothing to do with faith, and she was “troubled by the tendency in some Anglican churches to embellish worship with rituals which are not core to why we are there, and simply distract”.
In response, the Rector said that, for many, the simple act of lighting a candle expressed better than words their concern for a relative or friend, and their hope or desire that God’s love might surround them. That was no more superstitious, the Rector said, than repeating a particular form of words, and people were encouraged to pray in the church in whatever way they found most useful.
The Chancellor said that there was little doubt that, historically, the use of a votive-candle stand within a Church of England church was a matter of great controversy, and would have been regarded as a superstitious use. Nevertheless, there was no decided ecclesiastical case that was authority to that effect.
In 1985, in a case relating to St Michael and All Angels, Great Torrington, the Court of Ecclesiastical Causes Reserved, consisting of two Lords Justices of Appeal and three Bishops, saw no objection to granting a faculty for an icon and candle stand, although in that case the intrinsic acceptability of a candle stand was not argued. What changed between the 19th century and 1985 seemed to be that the use of candles was no longer regarded as necessarily superstitious.
In a case in 1995, Chancellor Rupert Bursell ruled that the use of a votive-candle stand was not necessarily superstitious, and that it would not be astute to detect superstition in the use of it. That was generally convincing, Chancellor Philip Petchey said, and, on the question of intrinsic lawfulness, compelling. In subsequent cases, the issue had not been whether a votive-candle stand was lawful, but whether it was appropriate to permit it in the particular circumstances of the case.
The views of the parishioners were highly relevant when deciding the appropriateness of permitting a votive-candle stand, Chancellor Petchey ruled. That there was no legal impediment to the grant of a faculty, that Miss Elkin was the sole objector, and that there was a pastoral case for the provision of a candle stand all pointed to the grant of a faculty.
The views of both Miss Elkin and the Rector were reasonable ones, held conscientiously by believing Christians, the Chancellor said, and it was not for the Chancellor of a diocese to decide between the intrinsic merits of those competing views. In those circumstances, the matter was one where the feeling in the parish was what was decisive.
Given the justification for the proposal set out in the statement of need, and the overwhelming support it had received in the parish, it was directed that the faculty should be issued.