{"id":58632,"date":"2015-10-06T07:00:29","date_gmt":"2015-10-06T14:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/?p=58632"},"modified":"2015-10-06T09:52:59","modified_gmt":"2015-10-06T16:52:59","slug":"ambo-or-pulpit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/2015\/10\/06\/ambo-or-pulpit\/","title":{"rendered":"Ambo or Pulpit?"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while now, you’ll know that a good portion of my posts either come from questions people have asked me or from my own wondering about a particular subject. Today’s post falls into the latter category…<\/p>\n

When Jesus preached to the crowds, Scripture records that one time He ascended a mountain to teach them (Matthew 5:1<\/a>) and on another occasion He got\u00a0into a boat and moved\u00a0a little way from the shore (Luke 5:3<\/a>). There is theological significance to both of these actions, but there’s also a very practical<\/strong> reason that the Lord did this\u00a0– He\u00a0wanted His preaching to be heard clearly by as many people as possible.<\/p>\n

The necessity to clearly hear\u00a0the words of preaching continues today and we see it\u00a0reflected in the\u00a0architecture of our church buildings in\u00a0the presence of a pulpit\/ambo\/lecturn.<\/p>\n

\"Pulpit-large\"<\/p>\n

For quite a while, I’ve noticed\u00a0that Catholic liturgists typically use the word “ambo”<\/em> to describe the preacher’s platform, rather than “pulpit”<\/em>, which you hear more often both in the Protestant world and in popular culture. However, is there really a difference between “ambo”<\/em> and “pulpit”<\/em>, or is this just a case of Catholic\/Protestant “potato\/potahto”<\/a>?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Technical Definitions<\/h2>\n

So, I did\u00a0a little bit of research. The history behind the ambo in particular is fascinating<\/a>\u00a0and would be well worth another post at some future date. In my reading I found some level of disagreement concerning\u00a0definitions, particularly if one bases the definition off\u00a0liturgical use, since this has changed somewhat overtime. So, to keep things simple, I’m going to give definitions based purely on architecture…<\/p>\n

The key difference between an ambo and a pulpit is that a pulpit<\/strong> surrounds the preacher and is attached to the church building, usually by a pillar:<\/p>\n

\"Pulpit\"<\/p>\n

In contrast, the ambo<\/strong>\u00a0is freestanding. Traditionally, it looked like this:<\/p>\n

\"Ambo\"<\/p>\n

…but nowadays they look like this:<\/p>\n

\"Ambo2\"<\/p>\n

It’s worth noting that in the Eastern Churches<\/strong>, the ambo is simply the semicircular extension in front of the Royal Doors:<\/p>\n

\"Eastern\"<\/p>\n

Before ending this post, a word should probably also be said about lecterns. The word comes from the Latin, meaning “to read”<\/em>. A\u00a0lecturn<\/strong> is simply a\u00a0portable stand, often sitting on a\u00a0podium<\/strong>, which is simply a portable box to raise the lecturn.<\/p>\n

\"Lecturn\"<\/p>\n

Of course, all these words are often used interchangeably, but if you’ve ever been curious about the technical differences between each them, now you know!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while now, you’ll know that a good portion of my posts either come from questions people have asked me or from my own wondering about a particular subject. Today’s post falls into the latter category… When Jesus preached to the crowds, Scripture records that one time He ascended a mountain to teach<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58941,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[3331,3292,2969,3293,3291],"class_list":["post-58632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faith","tag-a","tag-ambo","tag-featured","tag-lecturn","tag-pulpit"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Pulpit.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58632"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59353,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58632\/revisions\/59353"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}