(The British ter­ri­to­ries of Ascen­sion, Saint Helena and Tris­tan da Cunha)

At its zenith, church archi­tec­ture inspired awe, wonder, and fear.  Europe’s great cathe­drals of cen­turies ago sent shiv­ers down parishioners’ spines.  They made church­go­ers feel small, humble, and blessed to coex­ist with such mas­sive structures.  And cathe­drals not-so-subtly implied that these feats would be impos­si­ble with­out divine sanction.

Although many con­tem­po­rary reli­gious build­ings pro­vide beau­ti­ful exam­ples of modern archi­tec­ture, few trig­ger quite the same emo­tive shock that the cathe­drals once did.  Nonethe­less, recent devel­op­ments in archi­tec­ture–most notably the cre­ative use of glass–may present an oppor­tu­nity for a new twist on an old idea.

With this in mind–and with the caveat that I am not an archi­tect–I offer up the fol­low­ing con­cept: A church built on the edge of a steep moun­tain slope with a can­tilevered over­hang and glass floors, walls, and ceil­ings through which con­gre­gants could stare up at the clouds or gaze down into the depths to con­tem­plate awe and fear, Heaven and Hell, and belief and disbelief.  With a tingle in their toes, they would have to trust in God (and/or the archi­tects) to ensure that the translu­cent glass floor would pre­vent them from falling to their deaths: Faith made visceral.

To better illus­trate the idea, here are some rel­e­vant prece­dents:

The latest chap­ter in orga­nized religion’s millennia-​old quest to con­vert the hea­thens is play­ing out in Angola. A Wall Street Jour­nal arti­cle last week dis­cussed the Pope’s recent efforts to per­suade African Catholics to relin­quish the tal­is­mans, witches, curses and shamans of their ves­ti­gial ani­mist traditions.  The sit­u­a­tion raises del­i­cate ques­tions about where to draw the line between the occult of yes­ter­year and gen­uine arti­cles of modern faith. 

For my first post here on DE (where I hope to focus on ideas, inno­va­tions, and inven­tions), I thought it might be fit­ting to link over to a piece I wrote for Slate’s The Big Money that was pub­lished ear­lier today:

Good Rid­dance, Wall Street

Let’s tap America’s talent for some­thing besides greed.

The cur­rent finan­cial bust may have a silver lining, but not the one you might think. The glim­mer of hope isn’t in bar­gain base­ment stocks or dis­tressed real estate. The coming bull market will be one of people and ideas. And the poten­tial gains could out­shine even the most opti­mistic sce­nar­ios for the Dow.

…

For the full arti­cle, click here