Frank Gehry’s religious imagination—and a little Los Angeles chapel

Among the locales of Southern California that I saw for the first time on a recent visit was a Catholic church with a curious history: Christ Cathedral in Garden Grove, Calif., the seat of the Diocese of Orange.

The reflective-glass building was born in 1981 as the “Crystal Cathedral,” the 2,000-seats-plus home of famous Protestant evangelist Robert H. Schuller’s ministries and the locale of the weekly “Hour of Power,” once the most-watched religious television program in the country. After it was purchased by the Diocese of Orange in 2011 and renovated, it reopened in 2019.

Externally, it does not look significantly altered from its previous incarnation, but the interior has obviously been substantially refitted to meet the needs of Catholic worship. Nonetheless, one gets a distinct sense of difference from other Catholic churches inside, especially if one’s usual church haunts are more or less imitations of medieval European cathedrals. Like the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels 30 miles north on the 5 Freeway in Los Angeles, it makes for a unique liturgical environment.

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(Photo Credit: Composite image / Wikimedia Commons)