We have posted here previously about the awfulness of the presidential library that was being planned for the Great Obama in Chicago. Its opening ceremonies occurred yesterday; and reports are that it is massively over budget, and that some of the contractors who built the edifice are being stiffed. Of course, the building is profoundly ugly. An article at the Christian Post quotes a Christian pastor and author, Todd Friel:
Friel suggested the Obama Presidential Center design — which was reportedly led in large part by the former president himself — carries a meaning that transcends mere aesthetics or architectural preference.
“His new presidential center, I think, can be described as atheistic, anti-Christian, Marxist, and just another effort from Barack Obama to do what he’s been endeavoring to do now since he was nominated president, and that is to fundamentally change America,” said Friel.
Pointing to Obama’s personal involvement with the center’s design, Friel believes the building is a “tangible symbol” of Obama’s “utterly destructive worldviews” and an “intentional slight to God.”
“You don’t walk into a building and decide what it means; the building decides what it wants you to feel about reality,” said Friel. “Why? Because buildings preach, and the Obama Center is a really lousy sermon.”
To make his case, Friel touched on various architectural philosophies as expressions of worldview, including the architectural tradition rooted in Greco-Roman ideals and later Christianized to reflect objective truth and beauty. Deconstructionism, on the other hand, said Friel, draws on postmodern ideals and rejects notions like objective truth, beauty and form.
Linking the Obama Center with deconstructionist ideals, Friel called the tradition “atheistic with a healthy heaping of post-modernism” and tied it directly to Marxist ideology. “Traditional architecture affirmed order. Deconstructivism destabilizes it,” Friel said.
He concluded his message by acknowledging the impact of Obama’s voice even out of office.
“He doesn’t speak with his lips. He speaks with architecture. And what he is saying is as odious as ever,” said Friel, adding the center’s design could be summed up as, “‘I hate this America. I hate tradition. And I reject God’s ordering of reality.’”
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