Skyscrapers and Cathedrals

Highs, Lows, and Things Eternal

Last year, I took my 14-year-old daughter to New York. She’d been to a few big cities, but not the Big Apple; so we tacked it onto a quick soccer trip, which meant choosing only a few famous sights. Thankfully, she doesn’t mind speedwalking; we covered Central Park, Times Square, the 911 memorial, and a couple neighborhoods between them—but not the fancier Fifth Avenue stretch.

We crammed as many “bucket list” items as possible in our tiny 48-hour, drizzling visit—including a trip up the storied Empire State Building. We were told that evening lights and Christmastime paint a more romantic and magical New York; but on our short trip, we’d have to settle for April’s daytime and party-cloudy realities.

The long line to ascend the old skyscraper delivered on its touristy promises. We roamed the windy, exterior balcony that encircles the 86th floor, although there’s an option for the indoor observatory on the 102nd floor. We took in the feats of architecture and engineering that massed into the forest of shiny glass and concrete. Scattered around us were high-altitude patios and pools, plus all the unattractive necessities—satellites and HVAC equipment on dingy rooftops. Together, we stood in a canopy of competing skyscrapers and pitied those stuck in the ruins below.

By ruins, I mean the drab profusion of dirty streets and dramatic buildings that lends New York its mix of blight and allure. When we descended Empire State and walked again at street level, the spell of our dizzying heights vanished, replaced by realities—burglar-barred storefronts, dank city smells, oddballs, rattling subways, and addicts. Sidewalks, doorways—even in fancier pockets—all were dotted with stains or piles of despair. The skyscraper could raise so many bodies to the clouds but could do nothing do raise the surrounding mass of souls.

When disappointed by the world’s gloom and depravities, there’s some consolation in reading something from long ago—something that might as well have been written today. True things are always ageless like that, and one very good example of such is J. Gresham Machen’s 1929 remark from his baccalaureate address at Hamden-Sydney College. His words, far from a Chamber of Commerce blurb, captured my own sense of New York blahs: “It is a drab, dreary world—this modern world of which men are so proud. I for my part feel oppressed when I look out upon it.”

I tried to resist such thoughts on my mother-daughter New York excursion; inside my head, I persuaded myself of the glories of urban sophistication. I know I’m supposed to like the city and its cosmopolitan pulse. I know everyone loves Hamilton. This is the city that never sleeps, and its thinkers, artists and empires are exemplars of human potential. We must bask in its culture, keep its torrid pace and stone-faced customs, copy its fashions, gasp at its grandeur and applaud its funky eccentricities. We must accept the homeless and hopeless as unavoidable pathologies in this cultural mecca. To fail to do so would signify our ignorance and middling taste.

A brilliant libertarian and Calvinist theologian, Machen wasn’t just another uncultured killjoy. Neither was he opposed to the ingenuity and artistry that brought us advanced medicine, air travel, and soaring skylines. He would likely agree that even in futuristic Teslas and grey high rises, people can live, laugh, and love. Machen loved to imagine a world elevated not by pride or ingenuity, but by the overflow of hearts eager for the glory of God.

Machen instead had good reason for his frank pessimism. As a Princeton seminary professor, he watched theological liberalism infect his Presbyterian denomination. Over the years, softened and twisted doctrines formed a defanged sort of Christianity that replaced the true gospel with an ecumenical social gospel. As in our day, the theological left imagined it would construct new Babels to solve the world’s many crises—problems like immigration, social ills and education. Souls, a less urgent cause, would be left to wither in stodgy unmentionables like sin and judgment.

Although he’s known for writing Christianity and Liberalism in response to this crisis, he also wrote shorter pieces. One of them, called “Skyscrapers and Cathedrals” was, oddly enough, featured in a 1931 McCall’s magazine. It’s a beautiful summary of modern man’s poor substitutes for the eternal. Reflecting on the Empire State Building, he wrote,

“The modern builders, I thought, can uplift the body; they uplifted my body in express elevators twelve hundred feet in record time. But whereas the modern builders, in an age of unbelief, can uplift the body, the ancient builders, in an age of faith, could uplift the soul.”

When I visited the Empire State Building with my daughter, I unwittingly walked Machen’s footsteps. We bought tickets, climbed steps, and stood in line for the speedy elevator, prepared to be dazzled. However, a weird mix of awe and disenchantment simmered within afterwards; it’s no wonder his own visit inspired the critical architectural comparison.

Admiring the work of ancient builders is popular, even if their sacred inspirations are foreign to modern minds. What European tour doesn’t include a cathedral visit? The stonework, buttresses and detailed carvings transport us into an age when faith was the norm, not the exception. Now most cathedrals are reduced to tourist compounds, hosting art exhibitions and feeding the remaining flock with social justice gruel. Yet they were once heaven’s outposts, pointing earthlings to things eternal; a lifting up of the soul towards the City of God.

Back in New York sits an enormous cathedral—St. John the Divine, a relatively modern marvel just a few years older than Machen’s somber words. It’s beautiful, though officially unfinished, in the tradition of cathedral projects that took centuries to complete. Just like the old skyscraper, it offers tours and its own assortment of entertaining goodies—an interfaith art collection and Pride activities, among them.

Thousands of years into history, we still have our cathedrals, and we’ve managed to build some pretty Babels, too. Only now, there is no tension, for the cathedrals have joined the towers; for they’re pursuing the same earthbound and perishing cause.