Cathedrals in the Clouds

Man used to worship God from high places: the Jews built their Temple on ancient Jerusalem's highest hill, the medieval Christians had their Mont St. Michel. Shlomo Bardin, director of California's Brandeis Institute (TIME, July 5), thinks it is time religion returned to the mountains, as many communes and ecology-minded young people have already done. Bardin is building the House of the Book, the temple of the institute's new Jewish prep school, on one of California's Santa Susana hills. In big cities, he suggests, churches might emulate restaurants and cocktail lounges by having chapels on the tops of skyscrapers. The churches could reap economic benefits by renting their valuable ground space, but is Manhattan ready for a Noah's Rainbow Room atop the RCA Building? Is San Francisco ready for a Top of the St. Mark?

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