Ew. It’s as if old Soviet concrete crap was crossed with religion....
Bingo! From “Communist Goals” read into Congressional Record, January 10, 1963:
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art.”
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.”
If God is Beauty, Truth, and Goodness, it only follows that atheistic Communists would promote Ugliness, Falsehood (churches that look like space ships, atomic reactors, museums, shops, and concrete boxes, anything but a church), and Evil (church which is columbarium looking on outside, strobe lights on inside, church with creepy shadows on ceiling, the church in India which looks like a plane on top of a boat - not Evil, but totally Ridiculous!). Who would want to worship God in a space like that? Church architecture has traditionally pointed towards Heaven, to make the worshipper long for Total Beauty by being surrounded by it. When we are surrounded by Beauty, we feel safe and secure. When surrounded by Ugliness, we feel uneasy, on-edge, uncomfortable, and not directed towards God. We are thinking about ourselves and how weird we are feeling. It is not conducive to a repeat experience. In the language of the 70s, we are “turned off.”