The fallibility of humanity should not stop churches from pursuing beauty in our worship. And this beauty is not just for ourselves. A glorious church or work of art is a gift to its community and even the world. A magnificent cathedral gives a beauty and glory to the city it is in. This is a common bequest, given to all, but perhaps especially to those who otherwise would have little beauty in their lives. 

Christians should build cathedrals.

There will be haters, of course. For example, aged authoress Joyce Carol Oates recently took to X to whine about Cologne Cathedral, which famously took more than 600 years to complete and was, for a time, the world’s tallest building. Oates found this irritating and lodged the following complaint:

whatever such architecture meant at that time — 600 years to complete the project — can only be speculated by us today. obviously the vision is medieval Christianity; but so radically far removed from the simplicity of the teachings of Christ. how do you get from the moral clarity & humility of the Sermon on the Mount, to the church fathers of Cologne & their monument to — what, exactly? can’t be Jesus Christ who would have looked upon such vanity with contempt.

The cathedral was built as a monument to Jesus Christ, and contrary to what Oates thinks, it is entirely appropriate. Oates gestures toward a sort of hippie Jesus, a nice guy and simple folk teacher who told us all to be nicer to each other — a peasant preacher who would not want any grand buildings made in his name.

This is a popular view of Jesus, but it is not accurate. The Jesus presented in the Gospels is not just a nice guy. Even if we set aside the miracles and claims to divinity, the biblical Jesus is clever, complicated, and often alarming, a hellfire and brimstone preacher who warned of God’s wrath and judgment. As I put it in a few years ago in a piece examining some of the strong words of Jesus, “The Jesus of the Bible is not a laid-back dude saying, ‘You do you, man.’ Rather, He tells us that we are in danger of Hell and insists that we follow Him to be saved.” 

And that following is not just that of pupils learning from a teacher, but of worshippers adoring their God, who humbled Himself and suffered to redeem us. And that is why we should build cathedrals — they are not memorials to an itinerant human teacher but triumphal monuments to the God who defeated sin and death that we might live.

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