The Crystal Cathedral: A Glass Tower of Power and Politics in Orange County
This giant reflective glass tower remains one of the most distinctive buildings in Orange County, built in 1980 by architectural legend Philip Johnson. It's currently called Christ Cathedral and is the seat of the Catholic Diocese of Orange, but for decades it was known as the Crystal Cathedral, and was home to one of the most important evangelical Christian movements of the Cold War.
In 1955, Iowa native Robert A. Schuller moved to Orange County to open Garden Grove Community Church. Taking advantage of suburbia's landscape and the people who lived there, he first started preaching from the roof of a drive-in movie theater and famously invited the curious to "come as you are…in the family car." He opened a permanent facility in 1961 by another famed architect, Richard Neutra, that allowed Schuller and others to continue to preach to a commuter congregation that eagerly lapped up his idea of "possibility thinking," an early version of the prosperity gospel that meshed well with the ideals of post-World War II white America.
Explore some of the spaces in Orange County shaped by the Cold War. Click on the starred map points to read more in-depth stories.
In his early days, Schuller was also a strident anti-Communist who involved himself in Red Scare campaigns throughout Orange County like the Orange County School of Anti-Communism. Years later, he claimed to have disavowed that movement when he realized how political it was, but he remained a Cold War warrior through his "Hour of Power," the television broadcast of his Crystal Cathedral sermons, which began to broadcast locally starting in 1970 and worldwide in the 1980s, and through his best-selling books. He'd feature people who fled Communist regimes, hobnobbed with presidents and gave an invocation at the 1988 Republican National Convention.
In 1989, Schuller's "Hour of Power" began to broadcast in the Soviet Union through the help of oil baron Armand Hammer. Schuller's words had such an impact that during a 1990 luncheon in the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C., Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev praised Schuller's "calming influence" on his country.
"Tough times never last, but tough people do," Schuller told Gorbachev, whom he'd host at the Crystal Cathedral in 2000, before a crowd of dignitaries.
But the Crystal Cathedral wouldn't last. In 2010, Schuller's ministries filed for bankruptcy. Two years later, the Catholic diocese bought the Crystal Cathedral and its surrounding campus. Schuller's family continues to preach in Garden Grove, at a far smaller facility.
