Those of you who do now or have inhabited cubeville know that there is a certain thing about office furniture. In the larger companies, there are what are called the "furniture police" who enforce the idea that certain castes of people get certain furniture. For instance, if you are a low-level manager, you get a desk so big with certain chairs both for you and your guests while if you are, say president, you get a much larger desk and a different set of chairs.
Of course, this is a ridiculous thing on the surface but we have to take a look at the underlying use of these instruments of power.
Have any of you had the unfortunate experience of being called to task either by the principal or by your boss? What happens? You wander into the appropriate office to face the person who is where? Across the desk from you. Yes, the furniture is placed in the room so as to have the desk between you and the person in power. There is probably a chair there that is fixed so that you can't go anywhere while the person is towering over you. The important part that I want to draw attention to here is the desk that separates you and them. It is used as an instrument of power - to assert power over the immobile you.
The congregation that I attend is an old style Norwegian church. It has the altar up front with the rail around it and is far enough off the back wall to get to the door it hides. There must be a thousand of these churches in these parts. Sometimes, I wonder if they got the same plans from Sears or something…
When I get to a more modern architecture church, I invariably feel very uncomfortable about them. Then, the other day, I was doing something else when it hit me. The new architecture (check out the new worship space assumptions - see section S-10 Page 80 here) is to have the altar as a table in the middle of the performance space. In doing this, it places the altar just like that desk before, between you and them. Essentially, that altar placement puts separation between the pastor and the congregation creating a sense that pastors are something else, part of a separate priestly caste. This is quite contrary to Reformation theology.