For the faith to take root fully in China, and not as an imitation of another civilization – or, worse, of its cultural degeneration in recent times – it seems necessary to me that churches be built in the manner of the Chinese, not aping the buildings of Europe, nor merely putting native-inspired decoration over Occidental bones. But we have no surviving Chinese church buildings from early times. Architecturally, very little if anything survives: there is a pagoda near Xi’an, the Daqin Pagoda 大秦塔, that some have claimed for Christianity, but with no conclusive evidence; in the Beijing municipality, a Cross Monastery 十字寺 was used by Christians during the Yuan dynasty and perhaps earlier during the Tang dynasty, but at other times it was used as a Buddhist monastery. From the latter, we have a large stone with a cross and a vertical Syriac inscription of Psalm 34.5:
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ܚܘܪܘ ܠܘܬܗ ܘܣܒܪܘ ܒܗ
We do also have gravestones and steles, serving more as inspiration than as actual models. For church architecture, however, much has to be drawn from the architecture of Chinese mosques and temples in other religious traditions, in order to express the Christian faith well in the same native Chinese architectural idiom.
Pagodas in Their Cultural Context
In this post, I want to focus on how one might use pagodas in Chinese church building complexes. Of necessity, I am speaking of larger, architecturally more articulated churches, not smaller churches compelled to fit within the dimensions of a modest house.
Still, the difference between small and large churches is a difference of articulation, a distinction of degree and not of kind: the same principles govern both. Traditional Chinese houses are built around courtyards, and so likewise are temples. Whether small or large, an ordinary house or a palace – unless it is a small building containing only one room – a house or temple is built around one or more courtyards. The deeper one goes in from the main entrance, the more sacred (or private) the space. This complex of courtyards is the space in which a pagoda would stand in a Chinese church.
In Buddhist architecture, in which pagodas originally appear, the pagoda is an Indian stupa but architecturally nativized in the soil of China. A stupa (Sanskrit stūpa स्तूप, literally ‘heap’) is a domed hæmisphærical structure that holds several sacred relics of various kinds: images, statues, metals, and remains of Buddhist monks or nuns. In pilgrimage and meditation, devotees walk clockwise around the stupa (prādakṣiṇa प्रदक्षिणा), hoping that they may thereby by purified from their sins committed in their various lives. In a Buddhist pagoda, pilgrims often have access to multiple floors inside, and so they circumambulate inside the building rather than around it; the pagoda’s core, as well as the pagoda itself, is symbolically a buddha body for contemplation and self-purification through devotional rituals.
Obviously, in Christianity, we do not believe such devotional ritual avails for our purification from sin: our trust is in the finished work of Jesus Christ, who (as the Book of Common Prayer states it) made on the Cross, ‘by his one oblation of himself once offered, a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world’. This is the teaching of Scripture. In our justification before God, which is effectually declared in baptism, all of our past and future sins are washed away by the merits of Christ’s death and Passion applied to us, and this blessing from God abides with us so long as we claim it by faith in our crucified and risen Lord; in the sanctification of our human character, however, our sins do not fall away from us at once, but as we grow in faith we are conformed to the image of that holy and blameless Son of God who was once given for our sins. Our use of a pagoda, if we use this kind of building, must conform to the truth of the holy gospel and help strengthen Christians in their conviction that this gospel is trustworthy and true.
A Way of Using Pagodas in Christian Architecture
The use I have in mind is octagonal pagodas as baptistries at cathedrals, built without nails and leading people on a spiralling upward narrative journey of theosis from baptism to Christlike sanctity, with a cruciform finial (issuing from a Marian lotus) crowning the whole pagoda outside. Inside, relics of the saint could be displayed as appropriate for the devotional narrative journey, but also wall paintings, scroll paintings, sculpture, and calligraphy, well orchestrated into a compositional unity.
Inside, then, we might consider an iconographic scheme in comparison with the Timber Pagoda of Yingxian 佛宮寺釋迦塔, Shanxi, which dates to the Liao 遼 empire:
Each story features an elaborate set of the iconic group on a raised, octagonal platform located at the center, together providing five different emanations of the Buddha in an interconnected series as either the Vairocana or Śākyamuni Buddha (fig. 25b). On the first level, sitting on a throne of lotus petals, is an oversized Śākyamuni Buddha, although its identity has been debated, an issue to which I will return. The second level features the Śākyamuni Buddha attended by four bodhisattvas. The third level is the hall for the Buddhas of the Four Directions. The fourth level has a set of seven statues with the Śākyamuni Buddha at the center. At the fifth level, the Vairocana Buddha is surrounded by the Eight Great Bodhisattvas. The interpretation of the iconography in the pagoda has been a point of discussion.
With the walls adorned by a clockwise narrative of the patron saint’s sanctification toward the image of Christ, in pictures and words, our iconographic programme at the building’s core could be something like this:
First Level. This level is the feet of the pagoda’s ‘body’, which is iconographically the body of Christ. On this ground floor belongs the baptismal font, where the journey of sanctification by the Holy Ghost begins. Yet the whole journey is also encompassed in meaning and in saving effect by Holy Baptism, where a sinner ‘[is] washed, [is] sanctified, [is] justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God’ (1 Corinthians 6.11). What is promised in Holy Baptism comes to pass in the life of the saint, because the resurrection of Christ is itself a new creation, an eighth day after the Sabbath that closed the week. For this reason, too, are the font and the pagoda itself octagonal, pointing to an eighth day beyond the world of seven days.
Second Level. This level has an ecce homo (or Christ the Bridegroom) image of Christ, seated, wearing the Crown of Thorns, and attended by four virtues dressed in the garb of the Uyghurs (humanity 仁), the Mongols (justice 義), the Chinese (propriety 禮), and the Tibetans (wisdom 智). Patronal relics would be held inside the image of Christ.
Third Level. This level is the heart of the pagoda’s ‘body’. Instead of four buddhas around an empty space, four winged creatures stand for the Four Evangelists, with the faces of a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle. All four Gospels reveal a Christ in the centre who is not depicted.
Fourth Level. This level has the risen Christ flanked by the Twelve Apostles, two corresponding to each of the six walls not on the south and the north. Patronal relics would be inside the image of Christ.
Fifth Level. This level is the head of the pagoda’s ‘body’. Here, the risen and ascended Christ would appear in the glory of heaven, surrounded by flames of the Holy Spirit except on one side. On patronal feasts, processions could go up all the way to the top in imitation of the saint’s journey to Christian holiness, stopping here for a ‘votive antiphon’ (an antiphon, a versicle, and a collect), before returning to the main worship hall.
The Outside. Also in the Holy Baptism Court is space for instructing catechumens in the faith, arrayed around the baptistry where people are, in Christ, ritually buried with their sins and raised to new life; these classrooms also serve as a Christian school on weekdays. This Holy Baptism Court is adjacent to two other courtyards, one before and another behind it. The Entrance Courtyard, entered through a three-portalled shanmen 山門 (‘山-shaped gate’), has commemorative steles and offices, and from this Outer Court one enters into the Holy Baptism Court through an Archangel Hall guarded by figures of the archangels Michael and Gabriel in Tang-style armour; behind the pagoda, when one passes through a Rood Hall, is the Holy Communion Court, which is dominated by the Holy Communion Hall and also has some side chapels, a library, and perhaps a seminary the size of Wycliffe College, Toronto.
Cogito, Credo, Petam 
