church (chûrch)►
n.
A building for public, especially Christian worship.
n.
The company of all Christians regarded as a spiritual body.
n.
A specified Christian denomination: the Presbyterian Church.____________________________________________________
we will be concerned here with the first definition...why a building? and why specifically christian? because it's not about spirituality...it's about the material...about behavioral control...it's about money...you don't need a building to be spiritual...you can go out and look at the stars at night or watch plants grow to know you are living in cycles within cycles and realize that you are not the final end the universe had in mind...just a part of it...that's not what a building is for...it is actually an impediment...no...you need a building to bring people together in a group and establish a group mentality...one less open to independent, critical thought and more subject to group assessment and approval/disapproval..."are you one of us...or are you 'the other' "...the other is damned...institutional architecture is purposefully designed to diminish the individual...public buildings are large to instill what geert mak calls "antness"...a diminusion of self...some cathedrals would fill the same purpose...however small churches and even chapels are designed to negate the self by invoking the eternal in the face of simple human transience and ultimate oblivion...and that fear of self oblivion is the key to religion's behavioral control...alone, individuals might begin to question the veracity of the clergy...stray into heterodox thought, the bane of true faith..so the "individual" needs to be controlled...watched for signs of inattention or heresy "...and the seating is so arranged that the males are in front of the house father, and the house mother acts as a rear guard for the females. this ensures that everyone's conduct in public is watched by those who are responsible for his discipline at home. here too they take great care to see that a young person always sits next to an older one; for if children are left to themselves they're apt to waste their time in church playing childish games, when they, above all, ought to be developing a sense of religious awe, the strongest, if not the only, incentive to good behavior"...that is the ur-maoist sir thomas more ( a saint no less ) embraced by teleological authoritarians, religious or secular ( hitler was an austrian choir boy who "drank in the awesome solemnity of the catholic ritual" and sought to emulate them in the rites of the nazi party...stalin was a seminarian...there is a critical thread that links theology and authority ), to this day...so, in these terms, the material becomes a necessary part of the "spiritual" because there has to be containment, group think, peer judgement, and a loss of self for those commandments ( authority again ) to take hold and for us poor miserable sinners to toe the line and support the church...whether that be a poor parish priest or a jet owning televangelist...the church is a way to earn a living..and like all ways there can be big money in it if you have an entrepreneurial bent and the will to diminish individual thought...hurry...someone will snap this property right up.
