http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1339490/St-Nicholas-Church-parishioners-war-vicar-Lorna-Smith-ripping-pews-out.html
The above link seems to be about the function of religion in the current era and ownership of history.
Historic religious property/assets was accumulated through compulsory tithing systems imposed on the people. Artisans and others laboured for thousands of years. Architectural elements trace history and predate Christianity. Village church design can comprise for example- a Roman Font built on a pagan burial mound with Norman era foundations later renovated in the Victorian era, medieval stone floors over burial vaults and Victorian era graveyard statuary with carved internal sarcophagi of renaissance benefactor origin. Various people over the centuries may have gifted funds originally for dynastic glorification yet of lasting historic value and interest to the people.
These assets should no longer be used for religious purposes if they cannot be maintained appropriately as museum heritage. All too often village graveyards are destroyed by uprooting existent historic graveyard statuary/outdoor sculpture, over tidying, and continued burials obliterating history with polished black granite, gold engraved lettering and plastic flowers in contemporary urn receptacles.
Carpeted heated social centres, like sham marriages for immigration purposes, may be a religious money spinner but it is not appropriate to destroy the people's religious history museum to create such centres.
The church should train history wardens to maintain the people's built and crafted created heritage and forget about trying to continue religion or interfere with society. It is squandering and destroying the assets and heritage of the people. Perhaps The National Trust should be handed the historic property of religion and it would be best maintained by skilled preservationists.
A proposed contemporary refit and redesignation of an historic church building acknowledges the inappropriateness of religion in the contemporary era yet bizarrely blames created artifacts for this and tries to obliterate the evidence and labour of the people.
Yet this is not acceptable to the public as it transpires they are lifestyle worshippers and aesthetes. -Who enjoys praying in a warm carpety fug? Are they Assembly of God?- they are saying.
The antiques market may be rubbing their hands with glee at the thought of the pews and freed up flagstones exciting home renovators, but English Heritage and tourism industry will see the irate parishioner's point. Atheists with UK ancestory just despair of the greedy religious managements with their hands on the people's history and no apparent wish or ability to custodian it properly. This despite constant ploys for -funds to repair the roof- and banks of stashed money for the regular embezzlement of Ponzi schemes and thieving vicars.
