And so the steeple is dying out, as is the visual testimony of the cross that typically sits atop it. And a church building looks like a warehouse looks like an office supply building looks like an accountancy firm looks like denuded, secularized campus “spiritual space.”

Recently I was in a meeting on the top floor of one of Nashville’s tallest buildings. The view was marvelous and, honestly, quite a distraction from the day’s agenda. As the landscape rolled toward the suburbs, I became struck by how many steeples I could see poking out like white onion grass through the wintry grey canopy of trees. There were, it seemed, hundreds of them.

As I drove through town that evening, I passed the campus of Vanderbilt University, which stands opposite the beautiful Parthenon in Centennial Park. The West End is filled with beautiful churches and temples, and the busy road creeps along toward the toney Belle Meade area. The steeples on some of the churches are marvelous.

As I continued driving, I was struck by the beauty and craftsmanship of so many of these structures. Almost all of them were capped by a cross, even the ones that are attached to congregations that many evangelicals would barely recognize as being theologically faithful to traditional Christianity.

Indeed, many of the crosses have likely entered into the realm of visual “white noise” (is that possible?) that goes un-noticed by inured passersby. Who has time to look at a steeple, after all, when there are texts to send while sitting at a red light? Who has time to look up when our eyes are so busy focusing on what is just in front of us?

Read More (including comment stream): http://firstthings.com/blogs/evangel/2011/02/on-the-demise-of-steeples/

Dr. Gene Fant is Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences and Associate Provost of Union University in Jackson, TN