Source: From Babel to Basilica Publisher: Nick Brady | Author: Nick Brady Published: March 5, 2026 | Archived: March 31, 2026

In my late teens, I had the privilege of taking two trips to Europe with EF tours through my local community college. The first trip was to the UK and Ireland right after my high school graduation, and the second was a tour across Eastern Europe through Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, and Germany.

Of course, a common stop on our tours was to visit some of the most famed cathedrals in the cities through which we passed.

At that point in my life, while I had a certain level of appreciation for the design of the architecture in itself, I had mixed feelings about such building projects as a whole. By the time of the Eastern Europe trip in particular, I had had my encounters with Jesus in college that had changed the course of my life.

As I wandered from archway to archway, I often found myself bothered.

“What is the point of all this? God doesn’t need these things. He never commanded us to do this. He would much prefer us to give money to the poor, and to the ministry of the gospel.”

These were the kinds of thoughts that regularly went through my mind.

I bounced these thoughts a few times back and forth off of my teacher, Suzanne LaVenture, who led these trips. (Side note: check out her travel memoir which was published last year, in which I get a little shout-out!) I think she sympathized with my struggles, but also gave some push back. Where I ultimately ended up landing on the matter at that point—at least enough to quell my inner conflict enough to enjoy the experience—was to tell myself the following:

“They did the best for God that they knew how to do with their limited understanding.”

Years later, I would come to read a book which also changed the course of my life: Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola. This was one of those reads that had “all the answers” that I had been searching for. It made me feel as though I could see the “system” for what it really was. My Matrix moment.

The argument of the book—as I recall it now—was essentially that the early apostolic Church was originally not an “institutional” body, but was “organic.” Shortly after the death of the apostles, the Church became corrupted and began to look more like the pagan culture around her.

Essentially, as this book argued, many of the key characteristics of the organized Church today could trace themselves back to this corruption: church buildings (as opposed to meeting in homes), liturgy/order of worship (as opposed to open-participatory gatherings), clergy-laity distinctions (as opposed to egalitarian leadership structures), the Sunday sermon (as opposed to spontaneous and seasonal preaching), tithing (as opposed to freely giving from the heart), and so on.

I was so convinced of the truth of this book that I eventually ended up moving to Gainesville, Florida to be a part of an “organic” house church that Frank himself planted. I spent about 3.5 years with this community in total.

The time that I spent in Gainesville was probably the most formative of my life—and I do mean that in a positive way.

The failures of this church, however—which I wrestled with in the years after leaving—were also highly (in)formative.

This post is not meant to be my life story, however. I just wanted to give some background as to my own thinking on this matter.

While I never dropped that gracious (yet condescending), “They did their best” sort of thinking in that season of my life, I did come to feel much more strongly against the existence of church buildings as a whole. In fact, I had a full narrative understanding of why church buildings were a perversion of God’s ultimate purpose.

Here is a simplified version of what would have been my thinking in those days:

• God created man so that he could dwell in and among man. There were no buildings in Eden. Perfection was persons living in creation. If there was a “temple,” it was the people in the garden.

• Because of the fall, man, in his hubris, begins to build civilization. Their great architectural works—like the Tower of Babel—were acts of great pride, often even rebellion against God. Wherever there are cities, there is also great corruption.

• In the tabernacle, we find the partial restoration of God’s presence among his people. There may be a physical structure to “protect” this presence, but this is in part because of humans’ sin, and in part because God is using the understanding and forms of an ancient culture in order to relate to them.

• This setup is further developed in the form of Solomon’s temple. God permits Israel, in the hardness of their hearts, to have a monarchy, and eventually, all of the wealth and opulence that came along with it (which contributed to their downfall). God stoops again, for the sake of having his presence among his people, in allowing Solomon to build a grand architectural work to house his presence.

• Over time, the prophets begin making statements that seem to question the overall validity of Israel’s building projects, and even the temple itself. Isaiah 66:1-2, for example, says, “‘Heaven is My throne and the earth is the footstool for My feet. Where then is a house you could build for Me? And where is a place that I may rest? For My hand made all these things, so all these things came into being,’ declares the Lord.”

• After some destructions, rebuildings, and defilements of the temple through the centuries (e.g., the Babylonians, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, etc.), the Jews have an expanded temple mount under Herod the Great. God’s presence has been absent from the structure for centuries, although the sacrifices still go on there regularly without fail. The first time God’s presence is restored to the temple is when Mary and Joseph bring Jesus to present him in the temple shortly after his birth—although at the time, no one recognizes it.

• Jesus, during his ministry, begins to identify himself as the temple. When he makes the statement, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” They thought he was talking about the building, but he was talking about himself. He is indicating the transition from a manmade to a God-made house.

• A core aspect of Jesus’s message was his prophecy concerning the ultimate destruction of Jerusalem and its temple. He warns of this on multiple occasions throughout his years of ministry. It is his word against the corruption of the religious system, which had killed the prophets and faithful throughout the centuries. God was done with such an enterprise. The Church wasn’t going to be limited by such structures anymore.

• When Jesus dies, the veil in the temple is torn apart. God’s presence was available to all once more.

• At Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descends as tongues of fire, God is reversing Babel—the human disunity brought about by a corrupt building project. He is also replacing Solomon’s Temple, in that his glory has now fallen on his own creatures rather than on something made by human hands.

• The apostles and early disciples reaffirm all of Jesus’s message concerning these matters. Stephen, before being stoned, says to the religious leaders, “However, the Most High does not dwell in houses made by human hands,” and then proceeds to quote the verse from Isaiah mentioned above.

• The book of Revelation gives an apocalyptic and gloriously triumphant description of the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple. The ultimate hope of God’s people is found in the declaration from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among the people, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them” (Revelation 21:3). But there are no human structures. It’s a restoration of Eden… God among the people. No need to build an elaborate structure for the Most High any longer.

• For a time, the early Christians understood this message concerning God’s temple as having become the Church, and they lived it out by meeting together in homes. But eventually—particularly after Constantine’s conversion—the Church became more enamored with the world and began taking up their own glamorous building projects. They fell prey to those ancient civilizational temptations. They became determined to put God’s presence back in a building rather than among his people. They corrupted God’s plan once more.

• While the Reformation may have restored many of the things that the Catholic Church had “messed up” within the faith, there was still a great deal of work to be done in restoring God’s original purpose for his people—a great part of which involved abandoning the notion that church buildings had anything to do with it.

Some of you may be wondering how a guy like me could have ever become Catholic with an understanding like that.

Well, it’s only by the grace of God, I assure you.

Some aspects of this narrative I actually still affirm. Others I have revised. Others I have rejected altogether.

Next Thursday, I hope to share the undoing—or at least the reshaping—of this narrative, which would happen in the many years following Gainesville.