Edifice Rex

We attended a wedding recently at Kirk in the Hills, a Presbyterian church in Bloomfield Hills. It hadn’t changed much since we went there regularly in the late 60s, but then it was designed to look like it was five hundred years old.

Kirk is one of dozens of magnificent edifices built primarily in the 1920s, at the height of the automotive boom times before the Great Depression. I’ve been in a few of them – Christ Church Cranbrook, Shrine of the Little Flower in Ferndale, Metropolitan Methodist, and Mariners’ Church on the Detroit River.

In contrast to more recently built structures that resemble either barns or movie theaters, the older buildings look like CHURCHES. The stereotypical image they evoke was set starting a thousand years ago and reached the peak of refinement around 1400, when the Gothic masterpieces rose across Europe.

You can get a glimmer of insight about what technological masterpieces the originals were by reading Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth. He follows the construction of a cathedral in England through the eyes of a stonemason, but all the religious and political intrigue is there in vivid detail.

While most of these churches, including their modern counterparts were built to “The greater glory of God,” what they were really about was psychological warfare. When ignorant peasants and serfs came into these magnificent spaces, they had to be awed by the power implied in their construction. Yes, there must be an all-powerful God, but there must also be an all-powerful religious and political hierarchy blessed with boundless authority by that God.

Better not cross either of them.

While the edifices remain and the hierarchies that built them still hold sway, their power – and God’s – has severely eroded. We can watch as commercial structures of even greater magnificence go up in a matter of months. We are inundated with examples of moral depravity and political expedience among the clergy. The mystery, awe and power that fed the church’s dominance have been overarched. Been there, done that. What’s the big deal? Science daily debunks the cherished truths that the church used to claim omniscience for God. What is left when God is proved wrong? Should we still do as he says?

As a consequence, we are no longer afraid of God. We still have a lingering fear that he is still out there, sulking. We obey moral precepts as if God, like a radar cop, might be lurking in the shadows. We don’t want to get caught, but in truth, we know he isn’t actually there.

This is the moral contradiction that drives my character, Frank Healy. He still believes in God, but doesn’t trust him to mete justice. Frank feels like he has to do it himself. The rules are still good, we just need to enforce them ourselves.

God’s cavalry is not riding to the rescue.