75th Anniversary 1950-2025
Join us as we celebrate the 75th anniversary of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church on Sunday, May 4, 2025!
The festivities will include a special worship service at 10:30 am, followed by a celebratory catered luncheon at 2:30 pm at the Moorestown Community House, the very place where our church was chartered in 1950.
The architect of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church building in 1971 was Herman Hassinger, a member of our congregation. He was a highly recognized award winning architect who had designed new buildings, renovations and/or interiors of more than 200 churches, including many in New Jersey. For the 60th anniversary of our congregation, he wrote an article about the history of places of worship since early days of Christianity. It seems appropriate to publish it again for our 75th anniversary. In another issue of the Messenger there will be more information from Herman about his ideas for his own congregation’s architecture. Sadly, Herman and his wife Doris died in a small plane crash in 2012. We are fortunate to have some of his thoughts.
In the musical Fiddler on the Roof, Tevya sings the song Tradition. It’s about the way things have always been done. Well, a lot of what we do in building a church is based on tradition. It helps when you know the reasons for our traditions and how they got started.
The early Christians had no churches. They met in private homes or in the case of Jewish Christians, they met in synagogues, which were not temples, but more like schoolhouses.
The typical Roman house was organized around a courtyard, usually with a fountain. Since this was convenient for baptisms, the font was often located at the entrance to remind us that through baptism we enter the church. Just beyond the courtyard was a broad corridor beyond which was the main room of the home. That corridor in Roman times was called the Narthex. Today, we use that name for the vestibule that leads to the sanctuary. Once the basic layout was established, the main room was called the Nave, Latin for ship, same root as Navy. The church was the shipwhich led us to heaven. Today some Scandinavian churches have a ship model hanging in the rear as a reminder of the idea.
After the holy Roman emperor Constantine made Christianity the state religion, there was a scramble to find buildings suitable for Christian gatherings. The law courts, called Basileas, were pressed into service. The typical Basilea was entered mid-way on the long side and had two semi-circular ends. The Christians removed one end where they put a door facing the remaining semi-circular end, which they called the apse.
The far end, chancel, contained the altar and perhaps the pulpit. At first the altar was a simple table. The veneration of relics in the medieval church changed the altar from a table to a casket-like box. The Reformation re-established the altar as a Table of the Lord, a symbol of our ritual remembrance of the Last Supper.
Beyond that everything else has its roots in practical necessity. Candles were used for illumination and as a symbol of Christ, the Light of the World. The church was often the only large building in towns and villages of the Middle Ages. The weekly market, usually held in the market square in front of the church, might be canceled due to rain. In that case, the market was held indoors. Stone floors were useful when they had to clean up after the sheep, goats and chickens were gone. But this livestock was kept out of the chancel by the erection of a fence to keep the animals away from the altar. Today the fence remains as the communion rail. Most Lutherans have abandoned incense, unlike some other denominations. The only excuse for incense was the fact that few folks bathed and they mostly smelled bad! Today incense reminds us of our prayers ascending to God (Psalm 141). For most laymen unable to read, visual images told the Bible stories. These images were either painted on the walls (called frescoes when painted into wet plaster) or illustrated in stained or colored glass. Imagine a world without visual images – no illustrated books or magazines, no movies or television. The only images were religious and those were usually shown in contemporary costumes. There was no clear concept of the past as a separate different era.
Two millennia after Christ we have accumulated “church habits” or traditions in our worship places called churches. These traditions are nice to know and respect. But they are only a reminder that we are the heirs of our past as well as guardians of the future. Tradition reminds us that we stand in the line of one hundred generations of Christians. Luther saw the past as a prologue. He helped folks understand the fact that we must constantly re-examine and assess the past so we can keep what is best for the future….and that’s how we got to where we are today.
Herman Hassinger, FAIA