Theologian Helmut Thielicke once visited the United States and toured the United Nations building in New York. When he was shown the "chapel" in the UN building, he was appalled. It was a room decorated by spotlights and little else. Thielicke commented:
The spotlights were ignorant of what they were illuminating, and the responsible men who were invited to come to this room were not shown to whom they should direct their thoughts. It was a temple of utterly weird desolation, an empty, ruined field of faith long since fled only here, where the ultimate was at stake, only here was emptiness and desolation. Would it not have been more honest to strike the whole pseudo temple out of the budget and use the space for a cloakroom or bar?
