![]() Photograph: Scott Hislop/Scott Hislop Photo The ceiling of the church … ‘a cosmic scene hovers 20 metres above an altar and ambo, carved from pink Mexican cantera stone’. So, to see it now redeployed for its original purpose takes some cognitive readjustment: this is not another outlet mall, but an actual place of worship. It has since been used for everything from schools and railway stations to supermarkets and movie theatres, becoming the de facto folksy Californian vernacular. The Mission Revival style was popularised in the late 19th century, when nostalgia for simpler times was in full swing. It was a question of creating maximum impact with minimum means, the flamboyant theatre of Roman Catholicism filtered through a more frugal, primitive lens. They often featured thick adobe walls, heavy timber roof supports and clay tiles, with simple white plaster facades, moulded to recall the churches of the friars’ native Spain. Built using the forced labour of subjugated Native Americans – a dark history that the Catholic church has been reluctant to reckon with – the structures were dictated by whatever materials were available. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.Īfter newsletter promotion To see the Mission Revival style redeployed for its original purpose takes some cognitive readjustmentīeginning in 1769, the Spanish Franciscan order established a series of 21 missions up the coast of California, spaced a day’s horseback ride apart, in a colonial campaign to convert as much of the Indigenous population as possible. For more information see our Privacy Policy. ![]() Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. The missions were always very narrow, due to the available materials, but we had to accommodate 3,200 people in a wide, column-free space.” skip past newsletter promotion “We wanted to hark back to the original Californian missions,” says Mark Russell of Radian Design Group, the architect of the new church. This is an ecclesiastical billboard in the manner of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott-Brown’s “decorated shed” – a sign, legible from the highway, complete with three arched doorways and a niche for three bells (fixed in place, with speakers behind, natch). It greets its 880-space parking lot with a broad, stage set-like facade, a faintly baroque silhouette signifying the function within. A large octagonal cupola rises above a cruciform hall, with creamy stucco walls and a roof of rustic terracotta-coloured pantiles. Photograph: Oliver Wainwrightįrom a distance, St Charles Borromeo church looks like it could be a great barn, or an out of town wine warehouse with Mediterranean aspirations. ‘From a distance, it looks like it could be a great barn, or an out of town wine warehouse with Mediterranean aspirations.’ An external shot of the St Charles Borromeo church. And on the fourth corner of the holy junction, bringing a stately air to proceedings, now stands the biggest Catholic parish church in the whole of North America. Across the six-lane intersection is the more modest octagonal pavilion of the United Methodist church, as well as a Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses. ![]() On one corner stands the 3,000-seat megachurch of Visalia First, a big shed wrapped with the full-height tinted windows of a car showroom. ![]() ![]() Rising out of the rolling landscape of fruit and nut trees, which march in a mesmerising grid as far as the eye can see, stands a gargantuan new beacon that here, at least, God is back – with bigger ambitions than ever.Īt a crossroads on the outskirts of Visalia, a small city 200 miles north of Los Angeles (where the local paper once remarked, “There’s nearly more cows than people”), Christian fervour is brewing. In California’s Central Valley, the agricultural heartland of dairy farms and orchards that sprawl across the state’s flat fertile plains, producing half the country’s fruit and veg, the Catholic population is booming, and busy building. But some regions are bucking the trend, particularly in the south and west. As parishes struggle to attract younger generations, and almost a third of Americans now declare no religious affiliation, this one nation under God seems to be rapidly losing its faith. With declining congregations, shuttered chapels and an ever shrinking number of priests, it is easy to assume that church in the US is on the way out for good. ![]()
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