Architecture for the Gods
If this is architecture for the gods, the gods must be groaning. Not to  say that this big, handsome paperback look at more than 40 recent faith-centered  architectural projects around the U.S.--complete with full-color photographs,  plans, and excellent annotations--doesn't make it amply and diversely clear that  there has been a boom in America in recent years in the building of churches,  synagogues, mosques, and nondenominational chapels. And certainly not to say  that architects aren't finding all sorts of clever ways to update religious  iconography for modern times, or combine traditional and contemporary  architectural styles under one roof--be it deeply pitched, in the style of the  classic country church (like the new St. James Episcopal Church in Fairhope, AL,  whose heart-redwood boards, painted bone-white, evoke the region's charming Gulf  Coast carpenter-Gothic style), or domed (like Skidmore Owings & Merrill's  high-profile Islamic Cultural Center, the first mosque for New York City's  sizable Muslim population, skewed on its site to face Mecca, as required by  Muslim law, and complete with its own dramatic, postmodern minaret of square,  terra-cotta-colored panels).It's just that many of these sacred edifices aim so hard for contemporaneity or  flexibility of use that they look like anything but houses of worship. Here, we  have a low-slung, multivolume light brick Presbyterian church in Baltimore that  looks like an Eisenhower-era public high school; there, the Metropolitan  Community Church in Washington, D.C., whose enormous rainbow flag is the only  thing that tips you off that this is the first American church (and not a huge  gymnasium or sports arena) to have been built by a gay congregation. Certainly,  no one could be serious about worship in the Gethsemane Episcopal Cathedral, in  Fargo, ND, which resembles a hideous hybrid of a whitewashed grain silo and one  of those garish "luxury homes"--complete with a multitude of LEGO-like gables  and picture windows--that you see cropping up on (sadly) tree-shorn lots in  suburban subdivisions across America. Strip the interiors of most of these  projects of the telltale cross, Magen David, or what have you, and the  overwhelming effect seems to be that of a spanking new auditorium--all outfitted  in blond wood and gray slate--appropriate for a multitude of uses, but special  to none.With their skyward-reaching spires and far-flying buttresses, onion-shaped domes  and slender towers--even (in the case of early Protestant America) their  handsome, strong-limbed austerity--houses of worship once were stunning  expressions of human artistry and effort in the name of the divine. It's no  wonder, then, that amidst the (at best) "tasteful" palette of present-day  ordinariness that's showcased here the most spiritual of entries seem to be the  quirkiest or most outrageous. To wit, the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of  Latter Day Saints Temple in Independence, MO, with its psychedelic, illuminated  spire that spirals up into the heavens like a Dairy Queen soft-serve cone; a  tiny grotto-like chapel that overlooks the Pacific Ocean in Sea Ranch, CA, its  rustic, weirdly curved stone flanks and shingled-wood roof rising from the land  like Corbu's cathedral at Ronchamps, France (had it been scaled and styled for a  Hobbit); and the San Juan Bautista Mission, which was built on a shoestring  budget by a group of parishioners, professionals, and residents of the mostly  poor Latin American neighborhood in Miami in which it sits like a little jewel  from old Havana. Inside, the cherubim that are depicted on a lovely ceiling  fresco easily could be all of the many-hued children of 21st-century Miami, so  matter-of-factly does the image assume, and attain, contemporaneity. It's one of  the few instances in this nonetheless substantive, stylish, and engaging book in  which the creativity, expressiveness, and sense of wonderment that the gods gave  us in the first place haven't been sacrificed to the blandly mortal demands of  modernity.--Timothy Murphy--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.