Jerusalem Has Left the Building: The Church Inspection Act of 1861 as a Means to Rebuild Jerusalem in the Danish Parish Churches

Jerusalem imagery vanished from the Danish churches in the nineteenth century.The faith was losing its grip on the increasingly secularized population and thechurch buildings became more and more dilapidated and desolate. Since the earlyChurch, throughout the Middle Ages, and across the Reformation(s), it has been com-monplace to understand the church building–God’shouse–as an allegory of theNew Jerusalem. The visualization of Jerusalem in the church buildings was alteredalong with changing religious attitudes, but it was always represented, one way orthe other. These explicit visualizations or allusions to Jerusalem ceased in the lateeighteenth and first half of the nineteenth century. Yet, according to the Danish theo-logian N.F.S. Grundtvig’s(1783–1872) sermon of 1810“Wherefore is the Word of theLord disappeared from out of His House?”1the allegory itself, or at least the churchbuilding understood as God’s house was still very much alive. This chapter exploreshow and what measures were taken in the last half of the century in an effort to“re-build Jerusalem,”as the state church was replaced by the so-called people’s church