[Buddha-l] Fwd: mega-church & proselytising

[Richard P. Hayes]

Sally McAra gave me permission to forward this, which I am doing after
deleting the short paragraph in which she gave me permission to post it
if it seemed sufficiently on topic.

Moderately yours,
The moderator

-------- Forwarded Message --------
From: Sally McAra <s.mcara at auckland.ac.nz>
To: Richard P. Hayes <rhayes at unm.edu>
Subject: mega-church & proselytising
Date: Mon, 16 May 2005 11:16:16 +1200

That was a ghastly news story, hard to imagine even fundamentalists 
could take things that far, with it being so counter to the idea of 
separating church and state!

If the construction of a "megachurch" close to the airforce base was 
strategic, then that relates to my research interest in the construction 
of large religious complexes to attract interest & thus potential 
converts. My phd research is about the FPMT's planned Great Stupa near 
Bendigo in Australia - see www.stupa.org.au; (you'll be aware of similar 
things that the Foguangshan are doing with building large temples 
supposedly to impress, and make a "karmic imprint"? I'm rather 
fascinated by the whole concept of "holy objects" from an 
anthropological perspective, as well as the fact that on a personal 
level I feel pretty ambivalent about lavish temples etc.

So, if you have the reference for the Harpers article I would be curious 
to look it up. (I think I missed your earlier post, I don't read all 
posts, just for time management reasons).

Do you know any more about the actual building etc - eg if it was 
designed in some way to attract attention? A lot of megachurch buildings 
are rather plain, at least here in NZ.