Saturday Outing to Bath

After locking myself up in a study all week with books and a laptop, I left the writing aside today and took a short trip to the neighboring town of Bath. As the name suggests, this city is known for hot, mineral water baths. Although there is very little seismic activity in the UK, this city is one of the few places where thermally heated water comes up to the surface. The town was founded around 2,000 years ago by the Romans who believed the waters to be sacred and somewhat medicinal. Over the course of centuries they built bathhouses and temples in this location. Later on the Christian missionaries came and constructed an abbey on part of this ground, most likely tearing down the pagan temple in the process. The baths remained though in one form or another for centuries as people came to be relieved of their suffering from arthritis, rheumatism, skins diseases and a whole litany of ailments.

The abbey is now beautiful cathedral built close to if not on top of the Roman temple to the god Minerva. I have read of other early missionary efforts in Britain with similar circumstances - Christian missionaries (usually monks) enter an area and begin to instruct the people and eventually the pagan worship places are destroyed or dismantled and a church or monastery is put in its place as a new place to worship God and to serve as a base of mission. I have read Celtic literature that talks about "sacred space" and that the people recognized that a certain spot, even though occupied by a temple or sacred place for another religion, was somehow sacred and thus a natural place to put a Christian church. Needless to say, it would also be a bold statement about the victory of the Christian God over the god or gods that inhabited that space before. To read more go to: http://www.bathabbey.org/visitors.htm. They have prayer on the hour and get up in the pulpit while the tourists are milling around and give a few verses of Scripture, prayers for the city, tourists, and peace and then the Lord's prayer. A pretty good way to proclaim the gospel and instruct people about the God for whom the cathedral was built.

The pictures are of the main entrance of Bath Abbey, the Roman Baths that have been excavated, and yours truly at Bath, but I didn't bathe there, did you see the color of that water?