The Space Between (Cultural Exegesis): A Christian Engagement with the Built Environment

By Eric O. Jacobsen

The entire material world can be divided between the Natural Environment and the Built Environment. Over the past forty years, the Natural Environment has received more attention of the two, but that is beginning to change. With a renewed interest in "place" within various academic disciplines and the practical issues of rising fuel costs and scarcity of land, the Built Environment has emerged as a coherent and engaging subject for academic and popular consideration.

While there is a growing body of work on the Built Environment, very little approaches it from a distinctly Christian perspective. This major new work represents a comprehensive and grounded approach. Employing tools from the field of theology and culture, it demonstrates how looking at the Built Environment through a theological lens provides a unique perspective on questions of beauty, justice, and human flourishing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
• Release date: Aug 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781441238696

Eric O. Jacobsen

Eric O. Jacobsen (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is senior pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Tacoma, Washington. He is the author of The Space Between: A Christian Engagement with the Built Environment, Sidewalks in the Kingdom: New Urbanism and the Christian Faith, and numerous articles exploring connections between the Christian community, the church, and traditional neighborhoods. He is also the coeditor of Traditions in Leadership and The Three Tasks of Leadership and cohost of the Embedded Church podcast.

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© 2012 by Eric O. Jacobsen

Published by Baker Academic

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Ebook edition created 2012

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ISBN 978-1-4412-3869-6

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989, by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.

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"In The Space Between, Eric O. Jacobsen sets himself two goals: to get us to attend to urban space—the space between the buildings in a city or village—and to explain why Christians in particular should care about the quality of urban space. He succeeds admirably on both counts; cities will look different to you once you have read this book. Along the way he also introduces us to some of the most recent writings on urban space, and he offers a compelling explanation of why the urban space of our present-day American cities came to be as it is and why we should be dissatisfied with it. It’s a fine contribution to an extremely important topic that has been neglected for too long by too many."

—Nicholas Wolterstorff, Noah Porter Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology, Yale University; senior fellow, Institute for Advanced Studies

in Culture, University of Virginia

"Eric Jacobsen’s The Space Between is a seasoned Presbyterian pastor’s account of the reciprocal relationship between urban form and communal life. As Pope Benedict XVI reminds us, ‘Life in society must be considered first and foremost as a spiritual reality.’ And Jacobsen, working from a Christ-centered perspective emphasizing both justice and generosity, articulates not only for pastors and laypeople but also for neo-traditional urbanists what religious communities have to gain from traditional towns and neighborhoods, and what they have to give. Highly recommended."

—Philip Bess, director of graduate studies, University of Notre Dame School of Architecture; author, Till We Have Built Jerusalem

"Jacobsen’s book awakens us from our Gnostic slumbers. It reminds us that as embodied beings, we not only move through space but inhabit particular places. And it asks us how we ought to make and dwell in the built environment to the glory of God. The Space Between takes us on an eye-opening tour of the places that both shape and reflect us. Readers may never look at their homes, neighborhoods, towns, and churches in the same way again. This is an important first step in reclaiming the locality of the local church."

—Kevin J. Vanhoozer, research professor of systematic theology, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

"The Space Between presses the argument for the importance of the built environment to the mission of the church, deepening the challenge before us of partnering in the emerging kingdom of God. Jacobsen demonstrates that the church’s intellectuals are bringing to bear on the world of ideas the insights of Christian theology and our own intuitive experiences of the places we inhabit. Given the scale of what we have built—from the sprawling exurbs to the troubled cities—there is much to say and do. The Space Between opens our imaginations to see that the places we make can and should be sustainable realizations of beauty and places of justice."

—Christopher C. Miller, assistant chair for graduate programs, department of architecture, Judson University

Jesus urges us to love our neighbor, but in many modern cities we have destroyed our neighborhoods, making it much more difficult to know who our neighbors are, let alone love them. In this compelling and beautifully written book Eric Jacobsen tells us how that has happened, why it matters, and what we should be doing about it. This book calls us to think again, and more theologically, about the way our built environment shapes our life together. It invites us to consider how, through the shaping of our neighborhoods, we may participate more faithfully in the coming kingdom of God.

—Murray Rae, professor of theology, University of Otago

Dedicated to

Conrad W. Jacobsen

1936–2011

Contents

Cover

Series Page

Title Page

Copyright Page

Endorsements

Dedication

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments    9

Introducing the Built Environment    11

Part I: Orientation    29

1. Who Are You?    33

2. Where Are You?    55

3. What Are You?    79

4. When Are You?    103

Part II: Participation    131

5. Family    135

6. Politics    157

7. Church    183

Part III: Engagement    207

8. The Sustainable Environment    213

9. Loving Place    239

Conclusion: A Geography of Rest    271

Notes    279

Index    289

Back Cover

Illustrations

Fig. 0.1. Enacted Space

Fig. 0.2. From Garden to City

Fig. 0.3. Two Kingdoms

Fig. 0.4. Unified Kingdom

Fig. 0.5. The Most Advanced Civilization in the World

Fig. 0.6. Between the Garden and the City (II)

Fig. 1.1. Curb Radii

Fig. 1.2. Distance and Intimacy

Fig. 1.3. Connectivity

Fig. 1.4. The Automobile Exurb

Fig. 1.5. Pedestrian Shed

Fig. 2.1. The Days of Creation

Fig. 2.2. Carved Space vs. Objects On A Tabletop

Fig. 2.3. Legoland

Fig. 2.4. Aspect Ratio

Fig. 2.5. Leaking Space

Fig. 2.6. Outdoor Hallway

Fig. 2.7. Outdoor Room

Fig. 2.8. Streetwall

Fig. 2.9. Monumental Building

Fig. 2.10. Monuments and Monumental Buildings on Axis

Fig. 2.11. Fabric Buildings

Fig. 2.12. Saturated and Minimal Thresholds

Fig. 4.1. Four-Chapter Gospel

Fig. 4.2. Garden to City (Part III)

Fig. 5.1. Typical Housing Types

Fig. 5.2 Terrace to Villa

Fig. 6.1 Le Corbusier’s Plan Voisin

Fig. 6.2. The Demolition of Pruitt-Igoe

Fig. 6.3. Garden City

Fig. 6.4. Two Visions of Urban Life

Fig. 7.1. Typical Church Types

Fig. 8.1. Classic Conflicts in Development

Fig. 9.1. Regulating Lines

Fig. 10.1. A Place for Rest

Acknowledgments

When I first began thinking and writing about theology and the built environment more than ten years ago, it felt like I was the only one snooping around in the space between the buildings looking for signs of the kingdom. I have since discovered that I am not alone. In fact there is not room to name all of the kindred spirits I have discovered along the way. There are, however, a number of people who have been especially helpful in shaping and clarifying my thinking in this important area—Howard Ahmanson, Jim Belcher, Phillip Bess, Jonathan and Nate Bradford, Randy Frazee, Griff Gatewood, David Gobel, Tim Gorringe, David Gruesel, Charles Matthews, Ken Meyers, Christopher Miller, Stefanos Polyzoides, Murray Rae, Jill Shook, Clinton Stockwell, Gideon Strauss, Kathryn Streeter, James Van Hemert, Mike Watkins, Summer Wilkes, Cory Wilson, and Nicolas Wolterstorff.

I also want to thank Bill Dyrness and Richard Mouw who helped with the arduous task of backfilling my theological foundation after I had already started building the house. Lee Hardy has been invaluable to this project. He not only provided the illustrations and many photos for this volume, but also has been the intellectual version of the friend you don’t have to clean the house for. Lee has seen most of my work long before it was ready for public viewing and has helped put my ideas in their best possible light. And speaking of light, this project would never have seen the light of day without Bob Hosack who suggested it to me over doughnuts at the AAR, Lisa Williams who never fails to astound me with her patient care and attention to detail, and Lance Kagey who helped with the photo editing. And, of course, I want to thank all the folks at Baker Academic who believed that this subject was worth a second book; the First Presbyerian Church of Tacoma for giving me a couple of months to finish the project; and for Liz, Kate, Peter, Emma, and Abraham for allowing me to spend too much time on this project that should have been spent with them.

Introducing the Built Environment

But the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, "Where are you? (Genesis 3:9)

Begin Where You Are

Where are you? As you read these words, you are doing so somewhere. This may seem obvious, but bear with me a moment. You may think that the question is hardly worth asking. But since Where are you? was the very first recorded question that God asked, let’s run with it a bit.

Wherever you happen to be as you read this book, you are most likely in a place that we can call a built environment. So take a second to look around before reading further. Who thought this space through, and what can you discern about their values as you interact with it?

Did they value community very much? How can you tell? Were they thinking of you as a person, as a resource user, or as a consumer?

Think about how you got from the last place you were to where you are now. Was the experience of getting from there to here a meaningful part of your day, or was it a meaningless necessity to get you from point A to point B? Who decided how you would get from that place to this one? Did you have a few realistic options? Or was it feasible to travel only by car?

Questions concerning the physical location and features of the places where you live, work, worship, and play and the way that the various places in your day relate to one another are pretty unusual these days. Many would assert that these are no longer important (or at least not practical) questions. This perspective is rather pervasive both within and outside the community of faith.

Does Geography Matter?

I was reminded of this not too long ago during a discussion about youth ministry. We were talking about the ministry implications of research demonstrating significant benefits to young people who had five nonparental adults involved in their lives. The discussion immediately turned to a question of how we could set up programs at church that would help facilitate relationships between individual youths and five adults at church.

I mentioned that church programs may not be the only way to encourage youth to interact with adults in their lives. It could be accomplished by rethinking the kinds of neighborhoods in which our young people live. Interaction between young people and adults could occur organically if the following conditions were met:

Young people lived relatively close to church or in relative proximity to a sufficient number of adult believers.

The neighborhood in which the young people lived encouraged social interaction by having good sidewalks, a complex network of streets, and community-enhancing businesses (corner stores, coffee houses, etc.) mixed in with residences.

Although these are precisely the conditions under which young people have been informally mentored by adults for generations, the general response to my idea was that it was hopelessly nostalgic. Not only was my idea well beyond the range of solutions that this group might initiate (with which I agreed) but also there was a strong sense that such a solution was a movement in exactly the wrong direction (with which I disagreed).

We live in a culture that has become convinced that there is no longer any connection between geography (where one lives and the distinctive qualities of that place) and our experience of community. Community is about relationships has become almost a truism in certain circles. Questions of location simply don’t matter anymore.

There was some disagreement as to what kind of church programs would best engender meaningful relationships between adults and young people, however. Those who felt that relationships needed to grow more organically, but weren’t persuaded by my geographical argument, tended to look to communications technologies to facilitate relationships. Email, social networking websites, and cell phones if used intentionally could allow relationships to be formed irrespective of place.

The perspective articulated in this discussion helps to explain to some extent why it is so hard to get Christians to care about the physical environment that surrounds the places in which they live, work, worship, and play. It explains why we so often make choices regarding where we live without much thought about how far our home is from where we work, worship, and play. And it explains why we build churches surrounded by oceans of parking to which everyone must drive. So long as people can get from place to place in their cars and can stay connected through technology, very few of us care that much about the space between the buildings.

But this is all about to change. Either because gas prices will no longer allow us to drive our cars quite as far as we’ve been used to or because people will figure out that cyber-community and online social networking friends are no substitute for being in the physical presence of actual friends multiple times per day, questions of geography will become increasingly important over the next decade.

Questions of geography are already important. Every day, questions about geography are being raised in coffee shops, on sidelines, and through letters to the editor within your community. It’s just that most of us lack a conceptual framework for putting these questions together. Such a framework is emerging, and it is known by those working on it as the built environment. Those who are interested in the built environment often describe themselves as Urbanists.

Although the built environment is becoming an increasingly important subject for discussion, with a few notable exceptions it has not been on the radar for the Christian community.[1] This book is an attempt to remedy the situation by offering a Christian reflection on the built environment.

Via Negativa

The built environment frequently is ignored because the questions considered in this field are very close to (while significantly distinct from) the questions asked in a number of related fields. So the first thing we must do is to clarify what the built environment is not.

Not the Natural Environment

One of the easiest ways to begin to get a handle on the built environment is to realize that it can most easily be defined as that which is not part of the natural environment. Things that have come to be without human intervention are part of the natural environment, and things that were created or put into place by humans are part of the built environment. Just about everything that you might see while out on a walk can be put into one of these two categories.

Because the built environment is first understood in opposition to the natural environment, many mainstream environmentalists have tended to ignore it. This is unfortunate, because despite some obvious differences, in many ways the built environment and the natural environment overlap in some rather significant ways.

A section of old-growth forest in the Amazon is part of the natural environment. However, a forest in England is likely to have been planted and designed to look as if it grew naturally. This, technically, makes it part of the built environment. Similarly, the trees planted on a boulevard in a city are part of the built environment. Such observations can make it sometimes difficult to determine which is the built and which is the natural environment.

The difficulty of distinguishing between the built and natural environments may have a good side as well. One danger of maintaining a rigid distinction between built and natural environments is that it tends to obscure the fact that although human beings are distinct from the rest of the created order in many significant ways, we do share some similarities with the other creatures.

The way that humans tend to live on the land can be understood as a kind of habitat that is not unlike the habitats of other creatures. When their habitats are lacking in certain key characteristics, humans tend to languish; and when habitats are in an optimal state, they tend to thrive. One of the benefits of paying attention to the built environment is that it can help us think through settings that support human thriving.

On the other hand, the built and natural environments are connected because it is common for one to become the other. Specifically, all areas that are now part of the built environment were once part of the natural environment. One of the greatest concerns of environmentalists right now is the pace at which the natural environment is being developed and transformed into built environment. The rapidity of this pace can be explained to some extent by failures within the built environment. Because we have failed to create environments in which humans can live comfortably in proximity to one another, lots of people are seeking places to live that are far away from other people—aka, the natural environment. This suggests that if we really want to preserve the natural environment, we need to focus some of our attention on the built environment.

Not Architecture

For many people, one of the more surprising discoveries about the built environment as a field of study is that it is not exclusively about architecture. Architecture has to do with the design of buildings and other structures. The field of architecture treats these structures as individual units. People who study architecture employ categories of style (using terms such as Federalist or Georgian) and classify individual buildings and evaluate buildings based on aesthetic and functional criteria. The focus tends to be on the individual architect and the creativity and skill that are made manifest in a particular building. In this sense, we tend to treat architecture as we treat sculptures in a museum. When we say that Los Angeles is becoming an architecturally significant city, what we mean is that Los Angeles contains a growing number of interesting buildings that command our attention.

While buildings built by architects clearly play a significant role in the built environment, much of the conversation about the built environment sets aside considerations about architecture. For one thing, the field of architecture has already received plenty of attention by people who are interested in such things. But the more compelling reason is that a study of the built environment reveals that the spaces between the buildings are equally if not more important than the buildings themselves.

The facade of a particular building is not the only aesthetic contribution that it makes to the built environment. The way that a building sits on its lot and how it shapes the space between itself and the adjacent buildings can be done graciously, or it can be done awkwardly. Architecture is about buildings and their facades, urbanism is about the placement of buildings and how they shape the space around them. Although we occasionally look at the facades of buildings, we live much of our lives in spaces between the buildings.

Architecture buffs can tell you which buildings in a particular city are architecturally significant based on their connection to a well-known architect or by how well they represent a particular movement. But Urbanists do not necessarily recognize distinctions between significant and insignificant buildings. Rather, a distinction is made between things like fabric (or background) buildings and monumental buildings, which both shape the built environment in different ways. Urbanists care about things like corridors and plazas that are shaped by the buildings that line their edges. Those interested in the built environment recognize that a great many of the buildings we encounter on a daily basis have little or no connection to any architect at all.

Not Urban Planning

To describe someone interested in the built environment as an urbanist brings to mind the area of urban planning. But this, too, is off the mark. The field of urban planning emerged in the twentieth century as a way of using rational scientific methods to help solve the problems associated with the modern city. Prior to the development of this particular specialization, cities tended to grow organically around the natural flows of people and goods.

Or, in the case of particularly important cities, public buildings and thoroughfares were laid out with a coherent purpose in mind. Sometimes this purpose involved religious belief—such as the arrangement of pilgrimage sites in Rome. Sometimes the purpose was aesthetic—as with the beaux arts movement in France. And sometimes the purpose had to do with defense. The task of shaping the public spaces of a city around a particular shared value is often referred to as civic art. And there are important distinctions to be made between civic art and urban planning.

The purpose of civic art isn’t simply to make cities more aesthetically pleasing, but rather to help reinforce and communicate the layers of meaning that have accumulated within a particular city over the years. Civic art supports the monuments (statues, buildings, etc.) that tell the story of a city, as well as the settings (plazas, streets, and squares) that encourage the citizenry to gather and rehearse the story. The field of civic art has a great deal of overlap with the built environment, but civic art is no longer an active discipline.

Like those who practiced civic art in earlier generations, those interested in the built environment are attentive to the stories contained within our cities and towns. They often advocate for the preservation of the important artifacts of the city. Because of an awareness of the story of a city, Urbanists tend also to be concerned that new building projects will be valued not only by the current generation but by future generations as well for making a contribution to the story.

The specialization of urban planning that emerged in the twentieth century marked a distinct break with the tradition of civic art. Whereas civic art often represented an attempt to organize and appropriate the history of a particular place for the present and future residents, urban planning tended to attempt to solve the problem of the city, by breaking free from the past using statistics and rational scientific methods to justify initiatives.

Urban planning was an attempt to break down the organic movements and flows of the city into abstract categories and to reorganize them in a more efficient manner. As urban planning became normative, those with the power to shape the urban environment typically valued rationality and efficiency above aesthetic considerations or historical continuity. Whereas civic art represented an attempt to enhance the characteristics that made a particular city great, urban planning can be seen as a radical break with a particular city’s past.

Those who have an appreciation for the built environment tend to see that the best examples of civic art exist despite the efforts of urban planners in the twentieth century. However, it should also be noted that the field of urban planning has evolved significantly from its beginnings, and many urban planners can now be said to have an appreciation for civic art and the organic ways that cities develop over time. The field of urban planning, although distinct from the built environment, seems to be becoming more sensitive to issues in the built environment.

Enacted Space

Once we locate the built environment conceptually and spatially, there is one more aspect of this realm that we need to have on our radar. That is the aspect of enacted space. Enacted space explains why we cannot always simply go to a particular place and begin to make observations about the built environment. What is most interesting about the built environment is not available for observation at any particular time. We’ve already noted that the most significant aspect of the built environment is found in the space between the buildings. However, that space becomes interesting only when it is activated by people using it. For this reason, we need to understand the concept of enacted space.

Enacted space refers to the dynamic interaction of people and props in a particular place through time.[2] A baseball field is a place designed for a particular purpose. That place is often augmented with props such as bases, a pitcher’s mound, and equipment. And that space becomes activated when two teams schedule a game and play there at a particular time. If we want to understand a baseball field, we should visit it when it is functioning as enacted space. A church is another example of enacted space. A tourist visiting an ancient cathedral when it is empty may not be experiencing the church in its entirety. To really see a church as a place, one must experience it in the context of worship.[3]

Fig. 0.1. Enacted Space

Enacted space is an especially useful concept in its absence. We can look at a municipal map and determine how much public space there is in an area, but it is only on the ground and at particular times that we can see how much truly enacted space there is. It is much easier to build a public place like a park or a plaza than it is to create a successful public space that is regularly enacted. Any number of architects can draw an attractive space; a few can design a place that actually attracts people. We can observe areas where kids endlessly drive around in cars looking for a place to gather, and we can draw the conclusion that we have failed to provide adequate space for them to activate.

Thinking Theologically about the Built Environment

From Garden to City

Sometimes Christians fail to take the built environment seriously because they see the built environment as working against God’s purposes. The story of the Bible begins in the natural environment, and everything is very good. It is only after humanity is punished for its sin and expelled from the garden that the built environment as a project begins in earnest. The sewing together of fig leaves may be seen as a first step in this direction, but the project really gets moving when Cain builds the first city. From this angle, it looks as if the natural environment is a more godly environment and the built environment is stained by sin.

But this quick glance at the story leaves out some crucial details. A closer look shows not only humans but also God at work in adapting the natural environment. Adam and Eve sewed fig leaves together, but it was God who provided them with better clothes. The cities featured in the Bible are not just the ones that Cain built, but also Jerusalem, where God caused his Name to dwell.

But the most important evidence for the importance of the built environment for Christians comes at the end of the story. In John’s vision of the coming reign of Christ, he is given an evocative picture of our lives when our relationship with God is fully restored. And that picture is not of a garden or a wilderness, but of a city. The story of the Bible, then, provides an important reminder that whatever we may think of it, the built environment will be an important and inescapable aspect of our future.

It is interesting to contrast these very different settings at the beginning and end of the biblical story. Each pole describes very different conditions, but what makes them similar is the harmony of relationship that obtains between humanity and God, among humans, and between humanity and the rest of creation. In the beginning, there is the nuclear family in a naturalistic setting, taking baby steps toward putting its imprint on that environment by naming animals and collecting food. At the end, there is a human society greater in size and in complexity. And there is evidence of humanity adapting its environment in much more developed ways. We find walls and streets, ships and formal landscaping, and the glory of the nations being brought into the gates.[4]

We can understand the relationship between these contrasting images of harmony among humanity, creation, and God as one of realized potential.[5] The family in the garden is good, but it was never the intent of our Creator for things to stay exactly like this. The city (that includes gardens) provides a clearer picture of what God had in mind for human community and worship when God created us. We can think of this relationship as analogous to the relationship between the acorn and the oak tree. The acorn is wonderful and miraculous in its own way, but we really see the glory of an acorn when it grows into a magnificent oak tree.

We can plot this progression on a timeline. We begin in a garden and end up in a city. In between these two poles we find ourselves somewhere within the flow of human history. The question we first need to answer is, What does faithfulness look like in the space between the garden and the city?

Fig. 0.2. From Garden to City

Creation Mandate

Unlike with the acorn and the oak tree, the kind of progression we observe from the garden and the city includes a good deal of human intervention. God not only created humanity in God’s image, he also invited us to participate in the divine plan to redeem all of creation and bring it to fulfillment.

One of the first places we see this invitation expressed is in the first chapter of Genesis, where God gives humanity what is known as the creation mandate: God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’[6] This creation mandate can be broken down further into three submandates.

Be fruitful and multiply (or the procreation mandate) has to do with having children and intentionally providing necessary links in the chain of human history. Subdue the earth and have dominion over the animals (or the stewardship mandate) has to do with enjoying and taking good care of the rest of creation. And last, fill the earth (or the cultural mandate) has to do with developing inherent potentials by making something out of creation. When we build a house, paint a picture, arrange a bunch of flowers, or enact a piece of legislation, we are making culture and thus fulfilling our creation mandate.

Part of what it means for us (as image bearers) to worship our Creator is to carry out these three creation mandates. Our participation in the miracle of creation through procreation, our care for the natural world, and our drawing out the God-given potential of the materials of creation can all be done as acts of worship. Each one of these mandates affects our interaction with the built environment.

Serving the Kingdom

Thinking about the creation mandate can be confusing for Christians, because we share this mandate with all of humanity and not just with fellow Christians. How, then, does obedience to the creation mandate count as part of Christian discipleship? This question, and ones like it, emerges out of a particular way of thinking about the kingdom of God.

To fully engage questions of the built environment, Christians must first articulate their understanding of the kingdom of God. There are two fundamentally different ways to approach this issue. The more common way to think about the kingdom of God is called the two kingdoms approach. In this way of thinking, there is the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world. And we can distinguish between what type of work counts for the kingdom of God and what type of work counts for the kingdom of the world (or is worldly) by the type of work that is being done.

Fig. 0.3. Two Kingdoms

According to this way of thinking, worship, Bible study, evangelism, and participating in church programs of various kinds are all considered to be kingdom-of-God work. Working at a bank, fixing pipes, making a movie, and growing crops are considered to be worldly. This way of thinking is called a two kingdoms approach because it makes a very clean distinction between work that is for the kingdom and work that is not. The problem with this approach is that it confuses the institutional church with the kingdom of God and recognizes only church activities as kingdom service.

An alternative to the two kingdoms model can be called the unified kingdom approach. This alternative approach recognizes all activities, from worship to plumbing, to be done coram deo—or before the face of God. Each