The highrise office buildings dwarf the church spires in any major American city. The office buildings get taller and taller in competition with one another. Church congregations get smaller as do their budgets, and for efficiency church buildings flatten out like pancakes. This is the reality, but what is the message?
As Joseph Campbell points out, in each age, the tallest buildings indicate who’s really in charge of the society. The temple, the monument, the government building, the church, the office building. The Pyramids, the Mayan temple, the Medieval cathedral, the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building.
In our time, it’s obviously the office building. Floor after floor of workers stacked on top of one another in little cubicles. At the top the expansive executive suites, proportionately larger than the cubicles as executive salaries are proportionately than worker salaries. The buildings, with their high atriums, reek of wealth, as do the entries to the tenant suites. They are all about competition and wealth. And the workers can’t wait to leave them.
The churches, with their spires, invite not competition, but aspiration. Their sooty interiors are filled with stories and symbols and smells and light scattering all over, pointing to enlightenment. Though fewer in number, those who enter want to be there, where the vertical trip requires no elevator and can actually get you where you need to go.
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