Headline: `SACRED GEOMETRY' RETIREE BELIEVES CHURCH IS ARCHITECTURAL CALENDAR
Publication Date: April 23, 2000
Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch
Page: C-4
Subjects: ARCHITECTURE; RELIGION; BUILDING; SCIENCE HISTORY
Region: Virginia
Obituary: "Thou has ordered all things in number, weight and measure," quotes Stephen Stewart from the ancient apocrypha's reference to God that he said the British royal architect Sir Christopher Wren adopted as his motto.
Wren died in 1723, at least seven years before Lancaster County's historic Christ Church was begun. But Stewart, who has pursued the oft-referenced but never proven connection between Wren and the famous Colonial church, thinks the notto is apt.
"Number, weight and measure" he believes describes the architectural masterpiece right down to the curious symbols engraved in the metal key escutcheon on its front door and the church's decorative sunburst pattern of wooden inlay above its three-tiered pulpit.
Stewart is convinced the 265-year-old registered national historic monument is an architectural calendar.
He believes it was deftly created to tell time and celebrate the glory of Easter. It does, he maintains, through a number-crunching design created with the use of what he calls "sacred geometry" - the golden ratios of proportion that have existed in architecture since earliest times.
He says Christ Church is adjusted just slightly south of an east- west alignment. It's the only way possible to do what it does, he says. Among many things he has cataloged, it allows the sun to shoot a beam of light precisely upon the altar table during the midpoint of the days reserved for Easter in the church calendar.
The building, he says, was carefully planned so its high west elliptical window can capture the western sun beginning April 4, the midpoint of Easter according to the moon phase, and continuing through April 8, the midpoint among the span of days between March 22 through April 25 that Easter can fall. The beam slants down to glisten on the altar table or cross, depending on the day.
Whoever designed Christ Church "was building a house of worship including all of God's geometry found in nature," says Stewart.
Stewart is not without his critics.
Officials associated with the church foundation say there has never been a hint that Christ Church was designed to be anything else but a supreme example of structural art.
"You would expect you'd find some mention" in records that Christ Church was deliberately calibrated to capture sun rays, says Robert A. Cornelius, the church foundation's director.
But, in the course of dogged day-after-day observations and record- keeping over the years, Stewart says he's found that the building is alive with solar phenomena and references to calendar numbers 52, 365 and multiples of 13.
He has documented sunbeams striking, four times a year, a tombstone that's precisely in the center of the church's cross- shaped intersection. The beams center the tombstone on May 6, Aug. 7, Nov. 7 and Feb. 5.
The dates are referred to in astronomy as "cross-quarter dates," Stewart says. They mark the midpoints of spring, summer, fall and winter.
Outside, shadows from the eaves on the west-facing wing move in tandem with the beam inside the church, Stewart said. The shadows trace the course of spring to summer and back to fall as they are cast upon the west faces of the south and north wings, he says.
There are an average 93.5 days from spring to summer and 93.5 days from summer to fall. There are 93.5 courses of bricks on the building's walls, Stewart says.
But the tomb, which contains the remains of David Miles, a former indentured servant who was a county justice, holds a special interest for Stewart, who measured the dimensions of everything in the church and its church yard before the foundation banned him from the property several years ago.
Miles died in 1674 and was buried in the floor of an earlier frame church that stood on or near the ground Christ Church occupies.
Stewart speculates that his grave marker is a template for the design of Christ Church.
Under Stewart's scenario, churchmen could have used a dial post, a type of sundial like Bishop William Meade described seeing in 1834 at Christ Church, to align Mile's tomb on the 3.5 degree skew needed to allow Christ Church to capture sunbeams at special times, he says.
Significantly, according to Stewart, the dimensions of Miles' stone are 44 inches by 78 inches, which he points out creates 1.772.
That is the square root of pi when 78 is divided by 44.
A curious, odd-shaped stone that fits against Miles' tombstone contains measurements with the proportion of 1.618 - phi, Stewart says.
Both phi and pi proportions abound throughout the Christ Church design; they sprang from tried and true formulas used by the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, Stewart said.
"Miles' tomb dictates the building's orientation and the geometry that must be contained in it and everything explodes from that," Stewart says.
He says the distance of the west wall from the center of Miles' tomb is 1.618 times the height of the west wall's elliptical window.
That ratio establishes ridge geometric dimensions crucial for the building's success with sunbeams, according to his calculations.
The numbers and the masterful blending of geometry with astronomy also all but convince Stewart that Wren designed Christ Church.
Even though Wren was never known to travel to America, he could have supplied the basic plans for the church many years before it was built. All an overseas designer would have to know was the latitude where the church would be built so the proper sun angles could be achieved, Stewart said.
Stewart acknowledges the combination of light beams, the Christian Easter festival, classical geometry and odd-shaped stones give his theory a decided Indiana Jones edge.
He finds it strange the sunbeams spotlight the Miles' tombstone when the wealthy planter, Robert "King" Carter, who financed the church, lies buried just outside in the churchyard, Stewart says.
Even Carter's father, while buried inside Christ Church, is given a far less prominent resting place than Miles.
"Why is King Carter buried in the backyard, but the building honors Miles?" Stewart asks.
"It's something we will probably never know."