Adventure Delimited

Photo by rodeomilano.

In The American Spectator, Charles Paul Freund takes up the cause of the Third Church of Christ, Scientist, writing that preservationists are pressing too far for the Brutalist church:

Whether an appeal to expertise in Brutalism trumps philistinism, along with property rights, spirituality, and the church's own sense of its religious mission (and thus the First Amendment) remains open both to debate and to legal action.

By the sound of it, the Historic Preservation Review Board violated every enumeration of the Bill of Rights except the Third Amendment—which only means that they haven't made the Christian Scientists quarter troops yet.

The Spectator deems blood and treasure central to the defense of the church. Freund writes:

Federal law protects churches from local preservationist enthusiasms. Many congregations are cash poor, and are often housed in old buildings that may be appealing and arguably historic, but which they cannot afford to maintain. Forcing such congregations into a preservationist box may, as one lawyer told the Post, inhibit the congregation's religious expression.

Is this the case at the Third Church of Christ, Scientist? Is Christian Science strapped for cash? The article doesn't say. Or rather, the report won't commit to the implied suggestion that the church's small draw (its congregation numbers 40–60 members) owes to a repugnant temple. (Is fifty so surprisingly small a number for a Christian Science congregation? One reader suggested that the Brutalist design is most fitting, given the extraordinary violence that Christian Scientists commit against their members (primarily, in the form of child abuse and neglect).)

But that's all beside the point, insofar as preservation is concerned. From the Washington Post's report:

Tersh Boasberg, preservation board's chair, said during the hearing that the board would not address First Amendment issues in its assessment of the church's architecture.

Instead, he said, the board would base its ruling on whether the church's architecture is historically significant.

Rightly so. Were the Historic Preservation Review Board to consider the "property rights, spirituality, and the church's own sense of its religious mission"—in this case or in any other case—the sensible conclusion would be that an organization's situation would almost certainly change at some point, and therefore, preservation would never be warranted. It is hardly palatable, especially from a libertarian perspective, for a public group to go about telling organizations that they can't cast off their architectural albatrosses, all in the name of "local preservationist enthusiasms". Nevertheless, the price of architectural continuity is some degree of rigidity that must inevitably be borne by the people who inhabit the buildings.

Given that groups like the Becket Fund exist to protect the flexibility of religious organizations, it is fitting—it is balancing—that the Historic Preservation Review Board considers architecture and architecture alone in making its decisions. Its judgment is not always right—but the suggestion that its conclusions are ill motivated does not hold up in this case.

UPDATE: According to a reader with ties to the church, the national Christian Science organization is in fact in dire financial straits.

Posted by Kriston at December 19, 2007 9:17 AM