the importance of churches

This is a photo of a church that was (is?) being used as an operations center for Hurricane Sandy relief.
In architecture, religious buildings sit at the top of the pile of building types in terms of quality, significance, and social value. The word "Chartes" doesn't mean a place in France--it means the cathedral. Although people make trips to Disney World and the Mall of America, the spaces created by religious buildings still create the most important social experiences for human beings. Frequency of use isn't the issue here--a church that can be used in the manner shown above just once every thirty years  justifies its overall utility from the perspective of a person who is suffering from a natural disaster.

Modernism, both as a social paradigm and as an architectural movement, has not been kind to religious buildings. We're still deriving benefits from a capital stock, but I don't think that we're replenishing it in a meaningful way. When disaster happens, do we head for the nearest strip mall or the local meeting house?