Hannu Toivanen
Google
There are some very beautiful churches in the inner city of Helsinki. Old Church, almost 200 years old masterpiece of ecclesiastical art, is one of them.
I have to confess, I have some difficulties to relate completely objectively to Old Church. As a child, my school was next door to Old Church and pupils of the school were forced to go to the church at least two times a year. Simply: Forced. It tells about the position which Christianity not so long time ago had in Finland. It was not, indeed, a religion of choice.
But I cannot deny the aesthetic value of Old Church. At the summer time it's a white glowing pearl in the green sea surrounding the church. The inside of the chuch is tresses the majestic power which the church even today has.
Religious buildings are always expressions power, they are built within the dominant dogma, that is, within intentions of builders. Lines of flight are as scarce as possible - but when playing with aesthetism, with Sublime, it creates always a situation, spirituality versus dogma, and where as dogma is always artificial and temporal, spiritual is something nameless, outside of time.
And in the end, thus seen, in its aesthetism, white glowing Old Church is glowing something outside of time.