In a new article, I trace the parallel architectural histories of the American megachurch and the corporate-organizational complex.
The image of rural America as the paragon of morality and social harmony was buttressed by the specter of a nuclear attack on a major city. In the 1950s, municipal governments went out of their way to locate train stations, hospitals, shopping centers, and other critical infrastructure beyond the anticipated blast radius. While most mainstream religious leaders responded to the atomic threat with sermons denouncing nuclear weapons and grappling with the morality of war, many evangelical preachers exploited the apocalyptic mood to further demonize cities. Two days after President Truman announced the first Soviet atomic test, a young Billy Graham warned in a fiery sermon: Do you know the area that is marked out for the enemy’s first atomic bomb? New York! Secondly, Chicago; and thirdly, the city of Los Angeles!
After WWII, the mass-production technologies used by wartime factories were employed to churn out prefabricated houses, as American families migrated by the hundreds of thousands to fields of tract housing that now ringed most major cities. The church was essential to suburbia, as it provided a sense of purpose for residents who might otherwise feel consigned to anonymity as they commuted between far-flung offices, commercial strips, and residential subdivisions. Corporations addressed the same problem by adopting the doctrine of human relations, which sought to boost productivity by giving each employee–each “organization man”–a sense of his personal value to the company.
(image: Charles Spurgeon preaching at the Crystal Palace, 1854)