The Meaning of Philip Larkin's "Church Going"

"Church Going" by Philip Larkin is an intriguing poem about a narrator who explores the church and spirituality in an increasingly secularized world. The poem is broken up into seven stanzas and the first two stanzas are drastically different than the last five stanzas. In the first two stanzas the narrator makes fun of the church and describes it as ordinary he observes, "Another church: matting, seats, and stone..." which signifies that the church has no meaning to the narrator it's just a building like any other. The narrator also makes fun of the church by removing his cycle-clips as a sign of respect instead of a hat and donating an Irish sixpence which would be worthless in England. The last line of the second stanza the narrator, "Reflect the place was not worth stopping for," which means that at this point he still does not recognize the meaning of spirituality within the church. However, in the first line of the third stanza the narrator flips his opinion by saying, "Yet stop I did: in fact I often do," meaning that the narrator is fascinated by spirituality and churches in general and he admits he often dwells on the subject of religion. After the third stanza the entire tone of the poem changes as it goes from being satirical to serious. In the last five stanzas the narrator questions the meaning of the church as he questions belief, then superstition, and then disbelief. He moves through the stanzas by imagining what the church would be like without any believers and who the last person to seek the church for what it was, a place of spirituality, would be. By the end of the poem the narrator concludes that spirituality will never die out because someone will always seek it out and that the church will always be a place for church seekers, like himself, to go to.