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MUTABLE SANCTUARYDate: 04.17.01 Author:By R. Neuwirth
In the beginning, the gods didn't make house calls. They inhabited distant and unexplainable marvels of nature,
locations impervious to human intervention. Rock ledges, sheer cliffs,
darkened caverns, pristine clearings, restful harbors-these were the
paradigmatic sacred places.
But, as generations were born and died, as political and technical
revolutions altered social bonds, as a succession of cults swept into
popularity and quickly turned to dust, the idea of the sacred mutated
as well. People began to organize their own sacred spaces. Temples,
shrines, tabernacles, synagogues, mosques, churches. With the
construction of these buildings, the gods became accessible. You could
meet them in your city, even right on your street. And if you
moved-down the block or thousands of miles away-you could bring them
with you, creating a new sacred space near your new home. Slowly, the
sacred ceased to be an otherworldly category. It became something
human.
"To organize a space," historian of religion Mircea Eliade
wrote, "is to repeat the paradigmatic work of the gods." With every
church, synagogue, mosque, temple, we honor the divine and at the same
time exalt ourselves, mimicking the act of creation. When we construct
our sacred spaces, they are not purely sacred. They're alloyed with
human failings.
Which makes them inescapably, necessarily profane.
Perhaps our understanding of liturgy and iconography and architecture
is doomed to be primitive, the way most children draw pictures. What is
a church? A building with a steeple and a cross on top. What is a
mosque? A building with a minaret. What is a synagogue? A building with
a six-pointed star. But the idea that these forms are sacred and
eternal is wrong. Building types and forms of worship have fluctuated
wildly over the years.
For instance, the first synagogues were secular. In early Jewish
tradition, there was only one place where people could worship God.
Initially, it was the linen and leather tabernacle that Moses and his
tribe constructed and carried with them through the desert. Later, King
Solomon built a temple in Jerusalem and centralized religious
observance there. Then, sometime in the first or second century BC, a
new building type arose-the synagogue.
Early synagogues were not designed for worship. Instead,
they belonged to the civic world-an outgrowth of the city gate, not the
centralized temple. The gate served as the commercial fulcrum of urban
life. When Abraham needed a burial plot for Sarah, when Boaz wanted to
marry Ruth, the men didn't simply pray-they went to the city gate. But
crime was growing in the ancient world-and the gates to cities were
often shut for protection. "Because of the development of artillery and
weaponry," says Lee I. Levine, a professor of history and archeology at
Hebrew University in Jerusalem whose book, "The Ancient Synagogue, the
First Thousand Years," (Yale University Press, 2000), "the functions
that once took place at the city gate moved into the synagogue."
So, though there was only one temple, every city could have
one or more synagogues. And, Levine says, those early synagogues didn't
assume an explicit religious function until the first century of the
Christian era, around the time the Romans destroyed the temple in
Jerusalem. And the buildings didn't have a religious hierarchy for
almost 1500 years. "You don't need a rabbi to run a synagogue," Levine
notes. "The first time we hear of a rabbi leading a synagogue is in
15th century Austria."
In the Christian tradition, too, sacred space and liturgy have secular
roots. Christian worship started in people's homes. "There was no
special religious articulation of sacred space," says L. Michael White,
director of the religious studies program at the University of Texas at
Austin and author of The Social Origins of Early Christian
Architecture. Worship moved from portions of people's homes into homes
completely taken over by the church, and then into larger public
spaces. It wasn't until the fourth century, when the emperor
Constantine converted to Christianity and made it the official religion
of the Roman empire (some say he was a canny convert and used religion
to extend his domination), that the basilica became the official form
of the Catholic church.
Liturgy hardened as churches spread throughout the empire.
For instance, early Christians didn't have an entrenched hierarchy of
priests and bishops. Sects like the Gnostics actually elected a new
priest at every service. And, for most Christians, you didn't have to
go to a church to celebrate communion. Any meal could be sacramental.
Also, most baptisms took place in rivers or bath houses. It was only
over time that churches designed special fonts for the ritual. Says
White, "The baptismal space is created and liturgy grows to meet it. In
some ways it's the architecture, or the need for space, that causes the
liturgy to change."
Liturgy also changed due to practical and political influence.
In the early church, priests officiated from within the congregation.
Altars came later, to give religious leaders a bit more stature.
"Christian leaders, now for the first time, tended to be regarded as
authorities above and outside the church, rather than an authority in
the church linked with her collective life," Louis Bouyer wrote in his
study Architecture and Liturgy.
And, for much of the first millennium of Christian worship,
kneeling for prayer was unknown in the early church. Some theorists
suspect that the Catholic church added kneeling during the era when
serfs were expected to kneel before the land-owners. As Andre Malraux
noted in The Metamorphosis of the Gods, a study on the interplay of
religion and art, "Until the institution of feudal homage, the
characteristic attitude of Christian prayer during the last eight
centuries-clasped hands and bended knees-was completely unknown."
By the time of the Mohammed (6th-7th centuries AD), the
message was clear-sacred space was fully portable. The prophet decreed
that the world is masjidãthe : earth is a sacred place. Any building
can be a mosque. And, indeed, many famous mosques-including the
Ayasofia in Istanbul and the Great Mosque of Damascus-started life as
churches and were only converted into Mosques after a Muslim conquest.
The most visible sign of that conversion is the addition of
minarets. The minaret, a tall, slender tower, has become Islam's
enduring architectural symbol. Yet history shows that minarets were an
add-on to the mosques.
"The prophet said that the biggest thing you can waste your
money on is building," says Jonathan M. Bloom, an independent scholar
of Islamic architecture aand author of Minaret, Symbol of Islam (Oxford
University Press). "Basically, in early Islamic architecture, religious
buildings didn't have any towers or anything high. They were
unprepossessing structures."
Bloom's architectural research suggests that the minaret was
grafted onto the mosque in an attempt to give the religion more
importance in civil society, only becoming standard equipment 200 years
into the life of the religion. By the 9th century, mosques-which were
born as restful communal retreats-had mutated into impressive
architectural statements.
And liturgy developed to fit the form. Though Mohammed
established the five daily calls to prayer around 623 AD, early Muslims
prayed when the spirit moved them. It took almost three centuries for
the calls to prayer to become the norm throughout the Muslim world. And
only then did the minaret, which had been added to the mosque as a
statement of power, take on liturgical significance as the place for
the muezzin to broadcast the calls throughout the community.
To this day, it is very hard to conceive of a mosque without a
minaret. For instance, Madina Masjid, on 1st Avenue and 11th Street in
New York City, occupies a corner storefront next to a deli and
restaurant. But the congregation added a purely decorative minaret on
the back parapet of the building. Somehow, to them, it wouldn't be a
mosque without it.
~~~~~~ [secular meets sacred: a case study]
The building offers almost no clue that it's a church. Despite
a plethora of unusual exterior shapes and treatments-huge
armadillo-like metal panels to the north, a massive facade of Kalwall
punctuated by slit-like windows to the west (looking like a giant
glowing computer punch card)-the oversized stark silver seems shy and
static-a monument that doesn't want to be monumental. It stands on a
back street of a formerly industrial area now converted into shopping
malls. Its entrance fronts a parking lot, not the main drag. And it
offers no overt Christian symbolism.
This is the new home of the New York Presbyterian Church, the
largest Korean-Christian church in the Korean Diaspora. It's more than
just a church. It's a community center for its commuter
congregation-with dining facilities for 1,000 people, 80 classrooms,
and plans to add a gymnasium and basketball court. And the congregation
is already talking about more: some senior housing and perhaps a larger
sanctuary.
It's an admittedly conservative congregation, and its members
certainly didn't set out to be modernist standard-bearers when they
began planning their new church six years ago. They had a very
down-to-earth reason for needing to expand: overcrowding.
New York Presbyterian was born 30 years ago when 12 people
gathered to worship God in someone's living room. It expanded the way
churches in antiquity grew-first taking over a house, and then a bigger
house, and then a hall that had formerly been a catering facility. And
when the congregation even outgrew that space, church leaders picked a
new location-a 5.3-acre plot that had been home to the Knickerbocker
Laundry. To finance the $18 million project, the congregation went into
hock, selling $11.8 million in bonds through Great Nation Investment
Corporation, of Amarillo, Texas, which specializes in financing
Christian churches (the company takes its name from Genesis 12:2, where
God promises Abram, "I will make of thee a great nation.")
Church leaders initially planned a traditional building, but
they felt a little discomfort about the design and decided to talk with
other architects. One church member promised to contact his brother,
who was working in Chicago for architect Douglas Garofalo. Interested
in the job, Garofalo brought in Greg Lynn (now practicing in
California, but at the time based in Hoboken, N.J.). And Lynn contacted
Cincinnati-based Michael McInturf to join the triumverate.
"We didn't have a concrete idea of what the building should
look like," admits deacon Min Lee, treasurer of the church's building
committee. And what the three architects brought forth was the opposite
of anything they had expected. "From the beginning everything was
controversial. It was all gray and purple and white and black-not the
typical church colors. And the shapes were not really comfortable to
our eyes."
But over time, church leaders warmed to the idea of creating a
signature building. They felt it meshed with their aggressive growth
plans, that its unusual profile might allow them to harness a very
profane benefit: advertising. "If you have some kind of unique design,
maybe a trend of history will follow," says Richard Park, who has
belonged to the church for 29 years and chaired the building committee.
He notes that 19th century churches were different than those
constructed in the 18th century. "There's no reason to stick to a
traditional concept if a new concept might accommodate things better.
Here we had a chance to go beyond."
Still, there's some dispute over who wanted to make the building so
somber. The architects say the congregation always argued for
restraint-pulling them away from brighter colors and obvious religious
symbolism. But church leaders now say that they would have liked a few
more traditional religious symbols. Richard Park says he wants to mount
a cross on top of the building. And he plans to erect an electronic
sign board facing the Long Island Railroad track just across 37th
Avenue, to advertise the church's message of faith to passing
commuters.
There's another non-religious reason why the church might have
chosen a contemporary design. Immigrants, Garofalo says, are often very
bold in what they build. "They take a lot more chances," he says. "They
didn't come here to stick with any traditional styles. The idea of
having a home that looks to the future is important."
The architects note that the church doesn't make reference to
other religious buildings. Instead, they say, it takes its shape more
from the mall culture of the surrounding streets than from any
particular religious aesthetic. Says Lynn: "The church is really part
of the whole demographic of the suburbanization of that neighborhood."
And, he adds, the industrial aesthetic of the church arose not only
because of architectural interest and to evoke the building's former
life as a commercial laundry, but also "because it was a really low
budget project, less than $100 per square foot-about the same price as
the Toys R Us next door."
Church leaders believe the new tabernacle meshes well with
their congregation's traditional focus. "Now that people are using it
they have started to understand it," says deacon Lee. And the
futuristic contours of the building say something about the church's
evangelical mission. "Our church is a very fast-growing church," Park
says. He insists that New York Presbyterian will boast 3,000 or 4,000
members within five years, and perhaps 10,000 by the end of the coming
decade. If his predictions come true, the congregation will outgrow its
new home in a very short time.
~~~~~ [between profanity and spirit]
The role and form of a house of worship has changed dramatically in the
2,000 years they've been around. These days, the church has explicitly
recognized that what may be a sacred space occupies the profane city.
The $163 million cathedral now under construction in Los
Angeles, is a full-block development including a 2.5-acre plaza, all
designed by Jose Rafael Moneo. Moneo's vision includes a church shorn
of most traditional Catholic iconography. It doesn't have a steeple,
isn't cruciform (though it mimics the cross shape inside), and, unlike
most classical cathedrals, the side chapels will be arrayed outside the
main sanctuary. To enter, parishioners will stroll down a long
processional aisle before turning to enter the main space. Cardinal
Roger Mahoney has suggested that the full block development, located
near the government center and an enormous arts complex, will create a
public space "linking the secular with the sacred" in downtown Los
Angeles.
That may be a bit of an overstatement. Moneo's design may
avoid standard religious motifs (some traditionalists have recently
blasted the plan because it's not churchly enough), but it also turns
its back on the city. Moneo has positioned the cathedral to front on
the enclosed plaza, not on the street. So, though it may make reference
to the secular world, this church will be firmly located in its own
privileged sanctuary. Still, this is a high profile construction by a
very conservative institution, and in choosing a non-traditional form,
the Catholic Church, has recognized that church buildings play a role
in the profane world.
Fresh from his work with New York Presbyterian, Michael
McInturf has taken on the design of a church complex in a small town in
northeastern Ohio. It is a very personal job for McInturf because the
church is an offshoot of the one he grew up attending. Though still in
the early stages of design, he reports that he and the congregation are
using the book of Exodus for inspiration and are even discussing
creating a mock-up of the ancient biblical tabernacle for Sunday
worship. But he also sees this church as part of a conversation on the
nature and development of small American towns. Says McInturf, "When
people move into these towns, they go there for the Mayberry, RFD
feel-and then they destroy it with sprawl and growth." The church, he
hopes, will offer more than a dialogue with the divine. He wants it to
evoke a conversation about secular life too.
"What is a church?" Frank Lloyd Wright asked in a 1946 essay.
The architect-the son, grandson, and great-grandson of
preachers-offered this answer: "Isn't it a gratifying home for the
spirit of human love and kindness? A certificate of faith in man
himself as of God and for himself?"
That's the humanist interpretation: the house of worship as a place of light.
Others have held darker views.
Critic Georges Bataille considered churches authoritarian.
"Great monuments are erected like dikes opposing the logic and majesty
of authority against all disturbing elements," he wrote. "It is in the
form of the cathedral or palace that Church or State speaks to the
multitudes and imposes silence upon them."
And political philosopher Henri Lefebvre went even further,
arguing that without church buildings there might be no organized
religion, that the medium is the message. "What would remain of a
religious ideology-the Judeo-Christian one, say-if it were not based on
places and their names: church, confessional, altar, sanctuary,
tabernacle? What would remain of the church if there were no churches?"
Certainly, all monumental architecture is intended to fulfill
a purpose. Churches, palaces, and government buildings have long been
designed to evoke feelings of reverence, awe, and power. This can be,
as Lefebvre implies, a form of coercion. But the sacred doesn't depend
on monumental buildings for its appeal. Spirit has long had popular
outposts on Main Street. And now more than ever. These days, you can
take yoga at the mall, study tai chi in the suburbs, practice wicca at
military bases. And religious groups such as Falun Gong-which was so
popular in China that the communist regime has outlawed it and rounded
up 35,000 practitioners-have thrived without formal buildings.
Indeed, if there are old-fashioned cathedrals being built
today, they aren't churches. They're secular monuments-museums and
libraries-that function as temples of public culture. Think of Richard
Meier's oracular Getty Museum presiding over on its hilltop in Los
Angeles. Picture Frank Gehry's prophetic Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao,
Spain, hailed in terms of revelation. Or even two of I.M. Pei's recent
quasi-religious commissions-one literally a pop culture reliquary (the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland), the other a sanctuary (the
Miho Museum, built for a Buddhist sect on a mountain top in rural
Japan.) In everything from architectural form to the placement of the
shrubberies, this mostly submerged structure (it was located in a
nature reserve and couldn't be more than 13 meters high) seems more
reverent than many temples.
Like these museums, houses of worship are windows between the
profane and the sacred. They are fully human aspiring to the divine.
And they symbolize the divine aspiring to be human. "All creation,"
French poet Edmond Jabes wrote, "takes for its place an enclosed space
surrounded by the infinite." But, he added, these outposts in the
infinite bring us closer to God but also give God an unsettling
experience: "For the first time, [He] read Himself in the words of man.
A foreigner to Himself."
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