Megachurch and the American Corporation

Tracing the parallel histories of the American megachurch and the corporate-organizational complex. Joseph Clarke – Triple Canopy – Infrastructure for the Souls:

“FOR THESE DUAL INSTITUTIONS to minister effectively to suburbanites, they would have to be subdivided; they would have to adopt organizational and spatial frameworks capable of reducing their perceived size and conveying their appreciation for the individuality of workers and worshipers. In 1968, David Yonggi Cho, pastor of Korea’s Yoido Full Gospel Church, restructured his ten-thousand-person congregation by dividing the city of Seoul into small groups, or “cells,” that would each meet on a weekday in a member’s home. Members were encouraged to invite their friends, and when a group reached a certain size, it would undergo what Cho called “cell division.” Within a decade, the church was the world’s largest, with two hundred thousand members. The cellular model quickly migrated to the US, where it fostered a new breed of churches.

They began pushing Bible-study groups, teen groups, young-professionals groups, single-parents groups, addiction-recovery groups, motorcycle-enthusiasts groups, bowling groups, and ballroom-dancing groups. The church experience no longer revolved around the Sunday service.

That same year, the Herman Miller furniture company created the “Action Office,” the forebear of the modern cubicle system. It has since sold five billion dollars’ worth of “systems furniture.” Businesses loved cubicles because they enjoyed favorable tax status as compared with conventional enclosed offices. Workers would love cubicles too, the theory went, because the structures would provide them with personal space while promoting communication and collaboration.”

So this thing stared in 1968, hmm… The idea of a cubicle, besides the obvious economic and spatial advantage, is to have an illusion of privacy, a wall to hang the hideous family pictures to remind that your suffering has a purpose, while every word and move is connected, controlled and sacrificed to the corporate plate.