On microphones

This is taken from Addleshaw and Etchells' "The Architectural Setting of Anglican Worship" (1948):

It is sometimes said that over-large buildings can be made suitable for [...] services by the installation of microphones and loudspeakers. But this is to misunderstand the nature of liturgy. A liturgical service is an act which is both corporal and natural. It is offered by the clergy and their people, each taking their allotted part. But it is something which is eminently natural, the act of a group of people who see each other, and through seeing each other, oddities and mannerisms included, become conscious that they are a homogeneous body engaged in a work of worship. But directly the people begin to reply not to a priest whom they see and hear reading his part of the service but to a voice coming through a loudspeaker placed either over their heads or behind their backs, the natural element in the liturgy begins to disappear, and with it too a sense that it is a corporate act of a group of people with bodies as well as souls.