Posted on 11/12/2010 10:13:27 PM PST by hiho hiho
On 18 October 2010, Southern California's landmark Crystal Cathedral, the prototype of all late 20th Century American Megachurches, filed for bankruptcy. I drove up the following Sunday to get a look at the place while it was still in operation.
The Crystal Cathedral proper, a spectacular glass structure designed by Philip Johnson and completed in 1980, dominates a landscaped campus that includes the congregation's original church building, designed by Richard Neutra, Richard Meier's "Welcoming Center", and a variety of other buildings, reflecting pools and religiously themed statuary. A German tourist prevailed on me to take a picture of him and his wife posing in a larger-than-life tableau of Jesus as Good Shepherd.
The campus and decor are the culmination of a high-church revival in American Protestantism that began in the 19th century. It was then that evangelical Christians, who had traditionally assembled in meeting houses and preaching halls, constructed faux-Gothic edifices, dressed their preachers in gowns, and "beautified" their services, exchanging tedium for vulgarity. By the mid-20th century, they had appropriated all the "potent symbols of cinema secularism" theologian Reinhold Niebuhr described in his rendition of an evangelical Easter service conducted, as was not uncommon, in a movie theatre:
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I thought religion was a window into heaven, into another world of power, glory and intensity, to the contemplation of divine beauty. When I got religion, I never imagined this flat, dull evangelicalism.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Sad read, not because I care about Schuller, but what he has done in the name (nominally) of Jesus.
Sad read, not because I care about Schuller, but what he has done in the name (nominally) of Jesus.
I recall a line from one of Vonnegut's later novels - "What is more Protean than adultery. Nothing."
Maybe spirituality is more Protean than adultery ... I feel sure of it.
Now maybe the neighbor can buy the church’s property AFTER the church goes begging to him! I always like happy endings.
I don’t see it as a Christian Church at all - since it’s all about man and not about Christ. However, my opinion is from watching it 2x’s - one when the owner spoke and then his son.
Why do they wear gowns? Are they affiliated with some denomination or is this their own creation?
There was a church in Cashmere, Washington in, I believe, the late 70’s or early 80’s that was “the church to go to” if you were anybody. They had a building program that inspired members to mortgage their homes to give to the “building program”. And a lot of people did.
Then one day an officer of the church ran off with the money.
“Beyond that, as a religious believer I was disheartened. Was this all religion was: Cheerful platitudes and advice for successful living? Recipes for doing well in this world and the next? A pleasant place to pass an hour or two: an uplifting programme, brunch in the Welcoming Center and a stroll through the grounds?
I thought religion was a window into heaven, into another world of power, glory and intensity, to the contemplation of divine beauty. When I got religion, I never imagined this flat, dull evangelicalism.”
Wow. Good article.
“Beyond that, as a religious believer I was disheartened. Was this all religion was: Cheerful platitudes and advice for successful living? Recipes for doing well in this world and the next? A pleasant place to pass an hour or two: an uplifting programme, brunch in the Welcoming Center and a stroll through the grounds?
I thought religion was a window into heaven, into another world of power, glory and intensity, to the contemplation of divine beauty. When I got religion, I never imagined this flat, dull evangelicalism.”
Wow. Good article.
I searched for “protean adultery” just to see if I could nail the source, and the first hits were my own FR posting! Then there was some crazy site loaded with ads and links with the title “KURT VONNEGUT JAILBIRD BY THE SAME AUTHOR PLAYER PIANO THE SIRENS” ... well, I guess that would be THE SIRENS OF TITAN. Anyway, I think JAILBIRD was it, but I don’t see any other mention of it at this site! It’s all getting too weird for me.
He and his whole family are extremely unpleasant neighbors. I’m just sayin. Not good people.
amen! give me an old, run-down barn... that would work just fine!
He originally comes from dutch reform church of america.
We can have ‘church’ anywhere as the HS leads. YES!
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