A monument to answered prayer begins to rise in a secularizing England

COLESHILL, England (RNS) — Richard Gamble’s passion for Jesus has always been outsize. Twenty years ago, he had a vision from God to drag a 9-foot wooden cross for 77 miles during Holy Week leading up to Easter.

After that grueling marathon in 2004, God gave him a bigger, bolder vision: Build a wall that tells a million stories of how God has answered prayer.

Last week, Gamble, 56, broke ground on that vision — a 168-foot-tall architectural landmark that is expected to be one of the largest Christian monuments in England, if not the world. (Christ the Redeemer, the iconic statue of Jesus in Rio de Janeiro, is 98 feet.) It is planned to open to the public in 2028.

The Eternal Wall of Answered Prayer, with a price tag of 45 million pounds (or $59 million), will not, however, feature any familiar Christian icons such a cross, a fish, a lamb or a representation of Jesus. Instead it will consist of a giant white Möbius strip stretching nearly the size of a football field, upon which a million small rectangular bricks will be overlaid, each with a digitally linked story of answered prayer accessible on a mobile app.

“We live in a country where Christianity has been pretty much put on mute,” Gamble said in an interview at the Eternal Wall offices near the construction site. “To build something that big and unashamedly Christian, I don’t think anybody had the faith that it was going to happen.”

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