The rise and fall of the Crystal Cathedral and Robert Schuller.

Here's the sad story of the Crystal Cathedral and its founding pastor Robert Schuller.  Popular TV preacher who popularized drive-in church services and built the Crystal Cathedral and his success on the power of positive thinking.  I visited the Cathedral for a Sunday service in the mid 1980s and am told I even spoke at a drive in theater he spoke at in northwest Iowa.  (As a youngster I attended an occasion drive-in theater Sunday service with my grandparents in my hometown.)

“America loves success stories.” This is how a 1983 admiring profile of the famed Robert Harold Schuller began. And back in 1983 “Bob” Schuller, as his friends called him, was certainly successful. The son of pious Dutch Reformed parents, Schuller was born on a farm in Sioux County, Iowa, in 1926. That was one year before Sinclair Lewis published Elmer Gantry, a satirical novel about a ne’er-do-well preacher from Kansas. Though Schuller would match Gantry in exuberance and flamboyant style, he was no charlatan. Educated at his denomination’s flagship schools, Hope College and Western Theological Seminary, Schuller was already a proven pastor before being sent by the Reformed Church in America to plant a new congregation in Orange County, California....

The story of his ministry is the stuff of legend. Garden Grove Community Church began in 1955 when Schuller rented for $10 per week the Orange Drive-In Theater, a well-chosen site near the just-opened Disneyland. Drive-in theaters were the rave across the country then. “Come as you are in the family car” was an early Schuller slogan. Schuller preached from the tarpaper rooftop of the snack bar while his wife Arvella played a portable organ.

And come they did, not only to what was billed as the nation’s first walk-in/drive-in church, but also to Schuller’s expansive television ministry called “The Hour of Power.” In his prime on “The Hour of Power,” Robert Schuller was spectacular. He appeared each Sunday in flowing robes, with a booming resonant voice and sweeping gestures, while surrounded by fountains that splashed at a button’s push and a thousand-voice choir that sang some of the best religious music on television. At its height, “The Hour of Power” was the most watched religious television program in the world, seen by an estimated 30 million people on hundreds of stations around the globe.

To the fanfare of trumpets and the sublime music of “The Heavens are Telling,” Schuller dedicated the Crystal Cathedral on Sunday, September 14, 1980, just before California’s governor, Ronald Reagan, was elected as President of the United States. This amazing structure, designed by famed architect Philip Johnson, boasted 10,661 silver-tinted windows supported by a filigree of steel. The windows shimmered in the light that sun-filled day. The Crystal Cathedral, Schuller said at the time, was to be “a monument to mountain-moving faith,” a “star-shaped sanctuary sparkling in the sun” which would stand for centuries to come.

Today the building still stands, but the church is shattered. In October 2010, the church entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy, citing indebtedness of more than $50 million dollars. The following year, the 34-acre campus was sold to the local Catholic diocese for $57.5 million. Catholics have been in the business of converting auspicious buildings into sacred space ever since the Pantheon in Rome was transformed into a house of worship, but this is the first time an evangelical megachurch will have become a Catholic cathedral....

Robert Schuller has had critics aplenty, and he has given them a lot to work with—shallowness, showmanship, and pomposity. But the tone of the most raucous critics leaves much to be desired. The fact is, Schuller’s ministry has been admirable in many ways. Who can fault him for trying to reach out to the unchurched? His suicide prevention work was a pioneering ministry of mercy. His inviting Mark Driscoll, a younger Reformed pastor from a different quadrant of the evangelical family, to preach in his pulpit was a surprising initiative. Many testify to having been brought to a living relationship with Jesus Christ through Schuller and the Crystal Cathedral. I do not doubt their testimony, even if perhaps the Holy Spirit had to work overtime “in, with, and under” (to use Luther’s eucharistic prepositions) all the evangelical fluff.

The implosion of the Crystal Cathedral can be explained in many ways—dysfunctional family dynamics, financial hard times, lack of wise leadership, and a changing religious climate. Moreover, today’s digital generation has no time for a whole “hour” of power from anyone—two minutes on YouTube is enough! But long before the Crystal Cathedral filed for bankruptcy, another kind of insolvency was at work eating away at the soul of the enterprise. And here the critics are right.

Building on the self-actualization theories of Abraham Maslow, Schuller rode the crest of the human potential movement in the fifties and sixties. The deepest dilemma faced by men and women, Schuller thought, was the unsatisfied quest for human glory, the desire for self-esteem. In this schema, Jesus is the ideal ego-tripper, Self-esteem Incarnate. As Schuller once said to Phil Donahue, “Jesus had an ego. He said, ‘I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.’ Wow, what an ego trip he was on!” Schuller was also fond of saying that Jesus never called anyone a sinner. But red-letter words like “evil ones,” “hypocrites,” “blind guides,” “serpents,” “children of the devil,” and “adulterous and sinful generation” are not exactly compliments.

Schuller’s campaign to “positivize” the offending terminology of the Bible led not only to the dumbing down of the faith but also to its gutting out. It resulted in the de-sacrilization of salvation, which was a popular move in an increasingly secularized culture. In the sunny clime of suburban Southern California, it was a perfect fit—at least for a while. His bromides were cute. Instead of Jesus’s beatitudes, Schuller gave us “be happy attitudes.” Nevermind all that stuff about mourning and martyrdom, the hungry and the poor. Schuller also taught us that “tough times never last but tough people do,” deftly ignoring the fact that tough times can indeed last for a very long time, and that tough people crack and break just like anyone else. Schuller never learned what Karl Barth said about the liberal theology of his day, namely, that one cannot get God by saying man in a louder voice. He never understood what Richard John Neuhaus knew and put so well: “Something has gone dreadfully wrong with the world, and with us in the world.” At the end of the day, we are not only sick, we are lost; what we need is not a mere therapist, but a Savior....

The name of the Crystal Cathedral has been changed to Christ Cathedral—a good move. The transformation of the church’s worship space into something more appropriate for Catholic liturgical life has already begun. It will be a challenging venture. The soaring, postmodern architecture of the Crystal Cathedral conveys transcendence and translucence, but not so much mystery or intimacy. It was designed more for pulpit oratory than prayerful meditation. It is suited more for celebration than repentance....

And what shall we say to Dr. Schuller? One of his daughters has reported that he is in a reflective mood in light of his health problems. We wish him well with those struggles and in every way. What Schuller has said to so many others across the years, we sincerely say to him, “God loves you and so do we.” Perhaps he can find special solace in revisiting Question 1 of the Heidelberg Catechism, one of the great documents of the Protestant Reformation and a confessional standard of Robert Schuller’s boyhood church. I am sure he must have memorized this as young lad in Iowa:

Q: What is your only comfort, in life and in death?
A: That I belong—body and soul, in life and in death—not to myself but to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ, who at the cost of his own blood has fully paid for all my sins and has completely freed me from the dominion of the devil; that he protects me so well that without the will of my Father in heaven not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, that everything must fit his purpose for my salvation. Therefore, by his Holy Spirit, he also assures me of eternal life, and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.

A laundry list of problems facing Detroit. They won't be solved by a financial bailout.

The decision by the city of Detroit to seek Chapter 9 bankruptcy has been in the news.  The city has been slowly imploding for several decades.  (When I was a graduate student in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the mid 80s and it's population was round 1 million, people were wondering if the city had hit bottom.)  Here's article listing the problems facing Detroit. 

It is so sad to watch one of America's greatest cities die a horrible death.  Once upon a time, the city of Detroit was a teeming metropolis of 1.8 million people and it had the highest per capita income in the United States.  Now it is a rotting, decaying hellhole of about 700,000 people that the rest of the world makes jokes about.  On Thursday, we learned that the decision had been made for the city of Detroit to formally file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy.  It was going to be the largest municipal bankruptcy in the history of the United States by far, but on Friday it was stopped at least temporarily by an Ingham County judge. 

She ruled that Detroit's bankruptcy filing violates the Michigan Constitution because it would result in reduced pension payments for retired workers.  She also stated that Detroit's bankruptcy filing was "also not honoring the (United States) president, who took (Detroit’s auto companies) out of bankruptcy", and she ordered that a copy of her judgment be sent to Barack Obama.  How "honoring the president" has anything to do with the bankruptcy of Detroit is a bit of a mystery, but what that judge has done is ensured that there will be months of legal wrangling ahead over Detroit's money woes. 

It will be very interesting to see how all of this plays out.  But one thing is for sure - the city of Detroit is flat broke.  One of the greatest cities in the history of the world is just a shell of its former self.  The following are 25 facts about the fall of Detroit that will leave you shaking your head...

1) At this point, the city of Detroit owes money to more than 100,000 creditors.
2) Detroit is facing $20 billion in debt and unfunded liabilities.  That breaks down to more than $25,000 per resident.
3) Back in 1960, the city of Detroit actually had the highest per-capita income in the entire nation.
4) In 1950, there were about 296,000 manufacturing jobs in Detroit.  Today, there are less than 27,000.
5) Between December 2000 and December 2010, 48 percent of the manufacturing jobs in the state of Michigan were lost.
6) There are lots of houses available for sale in Detroit right now for $500 or less.
7) At this point, there are approximately 78,000 abandoned homes in the city.
8) About one-third of Detroit's 140 square miles is either vacant or derelict.
9) An astounding 47 percent of the residents of the city of Detroit are functionally illiterate.
10) Less than half of the residents of Detroit over the age of 16 are working at this point.
11) If you can believe it, 60 percent of all children in the city of Detroit are living in poverty.
12) Detroit was once the fourth-largest city in the United States, but over the past 60 years the population of Detroit has fallen by 63 percent.
13) The city of Detroit is now very heavily dependent on the tax revenue it pulls in from the casinos in the city.  Right now, Detroit is bringing in about 11 million dollars a month in tax revenue from the casinos.
14) There are 70 "Superfund" hazardous waste sites in Detroit.
15) 40 percent of the street lights do not work.
16) Only about a third of the ambulances are running.
17) Some ambulances in the city of Detroit have been used for so long that they have more than 250,000 miles on them.
18) Two-thirds of the parks in the city of Detroit have been permanently closed down since 2008.
19) The size of the police force in Detroit has been cut by about 40 percent over the past decade.
20) When you call the police in Detroit, it takes them an average of 58 minutes to respond.
21) Due to budget cutbacks, most police stations in Detroit are now closed to the public for 16 hours a day.
22) The violent crime rate in Detroit is five times higher than the national average.
23) The murder rate in Detroit is 11 times higher than it is in New York City.
24) Today, police solve less than 10 percent of the crimes that are committed in Detroit.
25) Crime has gotten so bad in Detroit that even the police are telling people to "enter Detroit at your own risk".

The author points out the pension problems facing Detroit aren't unique to Detroit but facing many major cities.

It is easy to point fingers and mock Detroit, but the truth is that the rest of America is going down the exact same path that Detroit has gone down.

Detroit just got there first.

All over this country, there are hundreds of state and local governments that are also on the verge of financial ruin...

"Everyone will say, 'Oh well, it's Detroit. I thought it was already in bankruptcy,' " said Michigan State University economist Eric Scorsone. "But Detroit is not unique. It's the same in Chicago and New York and San Diego and San Jose. It's a lot of major cities in this country. They may not be as extreme as Detroit, but a lot of them face the same problems."

A while back, Meredith Whitney was highly criticized for predicting that there would be a huge wave of municipal defaults in this country.  When it didn't happen, the critics let her have it mercilessly.
But Meredith Whitney was not wrong.
She was just early.

Detroit is only just the beginning.  When the next major financial crisis strikes, we are going to see a wave of municipal bankruptcies unlike anything we have ever seen before.

And of course the biggest debt problem of all in this country is the U.S. government.  We are going to pay a great price for piling up nearly 17 trillion dollars of debt and over 200 trillion dollars of unfunded liabilities.

All over the nation, our economic infrastructure is being gutted, debt levels are exploding and poverty is spreading.  We are consuming far more wealth than we are producing, and our share of global GDP has been declining dramatically.

We have been living way above our means for so long that we think it is "normal", but an extremely painful "adjustment" is coming and most Americans are not going to know how to handle it.

So don't laugh at Detroit.  The economic pain that Detroit is experiencing will be coming to your area of the country soon enough.