I came across an interesting article about the state of the modern church in America today entitled Beauty and Waste: More thoughts on Space and Worship. The blog is called Architecture + Morality, and has 3 contributors… an Architect, a Civil Engineer, and a Pastor. I learned of this blog via Treehugger. It’s rare that my religious readings and my design-based readings intersect, but it would appear that there are others out there who see an inherent connectedness between the work of the Architect and the spiritual state of the modern world. What really jumped at me in this post, was a quote about a man named Soren Kierkegaard.

“Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher-theologian, once described how he went into the great cathedral in Copenhagen and sat in a cushioned seat and watched as sunlight streamed through stained glass windows. He saw the pastor, dressed in a velvet robe, take his place behind the mahogany pulpit, open a gilded Bible, mark it with a silk marker and read, ‘Jesus said, “If any man be my disciple he must deny himself, sell whatsoever he has, give to the poor and take up his cross and follow me.”‘ Kierkegaard said, ‘As I looked around the room I was amazed that nobody was laughing.’

Kierkegaard wrote a lot about Christendom (note, not Christianity) and the failure of the church and its applied religion within his society. I feel much the same way that Mr. Kierkegaard felt about the state of Christian Church in America today. This is a very conflicted emotion for me, being a relatively new believer (just over 7 years now) and seeing so much wrong with the American Church. What makes this even more difficult is the fact that it’s not a specific denomination, or even a readily definable group of churches.

I look at the multitude of churches, fellowships, and gatherings of Christians across the United States, and instead of seeing the Faithful Church or even the Persecuted Church… I see the Loveless, the Compromising, the Corrupt, the Lukewarm, and the Dead Church. I wonder if ever in man’s history has the Church needed God more, and at the same time sought Him less? Perhaps the last days of the Holy Roman Empire just before the Protestant Reformation?

It makes me wonder if we’re right on the cusp of some sort of spiritual cleansing of the modern church right now… I guess only time will tell.

(image originally found here)