The Stones of Babel

Modernist Sacred Architecture & the Mortification of the Senses

by Catesby Leigh

Everybody knows the earliest story in the Bible that has to do with architecture. It is the story of the Tower of Babel, which attributes the division of tongues among men to the vainglorious intentions behind that most ambitious of construction projects. Architecture makes a distinctly inauspicious debut in the Scriptures, and it is entirely understandable that certain pre-eminent figures in the Judeo-Christian tradition should have concluded that any quest for grandeur in the world that man builds can be pursued only at true faith’s expense.

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