Sacred spaces: designing America's churches

Christian Century, June 15, 2004 by Gretchen T. Buggeln

Although congregations build churches to suit their worship and ministry needs, churches exist also in a wider context of neighborhoods and cities. Even the most nondescript little church structure marks its space as set apart for something sacred, and that gets noticed. In what congregations build and where they build it, they say something about their relationship to the surrounding culture. They also demonstrate what is important in their rituals and beliefs. Intentionally or not, buildings communicate what really matters to their builders.

With the advantage of hindsight, historians may have the edge in deciphering these messages. According to Kilde, the auditorium churches of the 19th century were not designed as isolated retreats. The congregations intended to have a public role that extended well beyond the boundaries of their buildings. The architecture itself, Kilde argues, "trumpeted the new public role of evangelical religion" as a source of order and stability that would reach out to and protect the larger community. A compelling aspect of Kilde's book is her reading of the buildings themselves in order to understand the religious culture that produced them: bold, confident, masculine and modern--yet slightly on the defensive.

We are perhaps too close to the architecture of our era to decipher its meanings so completely. Nonetheless, we should be aware of the messages our churches communicate about the place of religion in our lives and in our communities. Consider the megachurch. How honest are buildings that rely on sophisticated sound systems to mask dismal acoustics? Can a church built in the idiom of a secular consumer society effectively counter that culture's influences? These books lead us to ask such questions and encourage us to seek the answers.

When Church Became Theatre: The Transformation of Evangelical Church Architecture and Worship in Nineteenth-Century America. By Jeanne Halgren Kilde. Oxford University Press, 310 pp., $45.00.

Ugly as Sin: Why They Changed Our Churches from Sacred Places to Meeting Spaces--and How We Can Change Them Back Again. By Michael S. Rose. Sophia Institute Press, 239 pp., $24.95.

Building from Belief: Advance, Retreat, and Compromise in the Remaking of Catholic Church Architecture. By Michael E. DeSanctis. Liturgical Press, 115 pp., $19.95.

From Meetinghouse to Megachurch: A Material and Cultural History. By Anne C. Loveland and Otis B. Wheeler. University of Missouri Press, 336 pp., $59.95.

Gretchen T. Buggeln is associate professor and director of the research fellowship program at the Winterthur Museum in Delaware. She recently wrote Temples of Grace: The Material Transformation of Connecticut's Churches, 1790-1840.