End Times and Architectural Style on the Christian Campus

The television evangelist Pat Robertson predicted the end of the world by 1982. In February he said: “The onrush of events toward the end of the year may see the world in flames.” The world in flames and, presumably also in flames, the red brick campus of his Regent University, constructed from 1979. Why build, and why in a mode informed by architectural tradition, when ultimate destruction was nigh?

This paper examines the idea of architectural “style” on evangelical Christian campuses built in an era in which religious cosmologies came into contact with the prospect of nuclear disaster: the atomic bomb promised the fulfillment of biblical prophecy and allowed for a temporary alliance between secular and religious visions of the end of human history.

It is in this context of Cold War-era end-of-the-world thinking, and in relation to the biblical anticipation of the apocalypse, that I consider the contrasting choices of “modernistic” and neo-vernacular idioms on the Christian campus. What does it mean to revive styles of the past, or to build in a mode oriented toward the future, when the end of history is imminent? Design undertaken within the framework of assumed apocalyptic narratives troubles notions of permanence and durability—historically vital terms for thinking about building.

The paper takes two primary case studies: Robertson’s Regent University in Virginia Beach, which hosts the Christian Broadcasting Network and was built in a “Jeffersonian” vernacular; and Oral Roberts’s Tulsa university (1963–) unique at its time for its brash "image" of modernism.