At Triple Canopy, architecture critic Joseph Clarke traces the parallel histories of the American megachurch and the corporate-organizational complex:
The industrial economy and its workers came to dominate American cities at the dawn of the twentieth century, and many middle-class whites escaped to new suburban developments. Their churches followed, but the architecture changed. Protestant worship services, once consisting almost entirely of preaching, had begun to include more elaborate participatory singing, recited exchanges between congregation and minister, and musical performances. Church architecture underwent a corresponding shift, from rectilinear designs modeled on early meeting houses to amphitheater-like layouts with radial seating and stages with elaborate pulpits and pipe organs.
Continue reading (and don’t miss the images) at Triple Canopy.