Doctrine By Design
The Theology Of Church Architecture
By Leon Ruch
What does your church teach?
Before you answer that question with a doctrinal or theological statement, let me ask it a different way: What does your meetinghouse reveal about the values and priorities of your congregation?
I suspect that's a question that is given little consideration by leadership teams and building committees, but surely the opportunity exists for church buildings to be as "purpose-driven" as any other aspect of ministry.
Here are a few examples of ways that architecture and theology can be related:
- Locations for the pulpit, communion table, worship team, choir, and musical instruments express the relative priority of these aspects of our worship.
- If there is a platform, its height above the seating area may indicate the degree of importance placed on the activities that occur there.
- Accommodations for baptism, communion, weddings, and funerals can express our views of these ordinances; for example, the presence of a built-in baptistery probably indicates the preferred mode of baptism, but its absence may or may not be significant.
Sacred, majestic and beautiful
Historically, church architecture has been very intentional about expressing theological messages through form and ornament. Some of the earliest church buildings were adapted from the Roman basilica, a rectangular structure used for judicial, political, and community assemblies. As post-Constantinian Christianity gained prominence and the Roman empire faded, basilicas were converted to church buildings and new structures were built in the same form, with the addition of wings, or transepts, that formed a cross-shaped plan. The long axis of the building and raised or screened chancel enforced the performer-observer relationship between clergy and laity.
Developments in church form through the Romanesque and Gothic periods of the early middle ages, implemented through advances in structural engineering such as flying buttresses, were driven by a desire to maximize the amount of light, symbolic of God's illumination, entering the building. Large decorative stained glass windows were installed, and in succeeding centuries most of the remaining wall areas were sculpted and covered with symbolic ornamentation. The height of the structure, and the massive towers flanking the entrance, gave the building a visual prominence commensurate with the church's influence in the community. After the rise of the Dominican order, with its emphasis on preaching, some churches included an elevated pulpit on the long wall of the central nave, a location selected for optimum acoustics.
Through its ornamental features, the medieval cathedral served as a liturgical and educational tool. This was at a time when the written Word was not available to the common people, before Wycliffe and Gutenberg overcame the technical obstacles of translation and printing, and before the reformers and Anabaptists overcame institutional objections to personal study of the scriptures. The stories of the Bible were told visually through the arts (sculpture, painting, frescoes, mosaics, stained glass) as the builders and artisans constructed the house of God in each community. The richness of this art is so overwhelming that entire careers in the field of art history can be spent analyzing the development and symbolism of the ornamentation of churches and cathedrals.
Simple, substantial and beautiful
For contrast, fast-forward to a typical Mennonite meetinghouse of the early to mid-20th century. A simple rectangular structure with a gable roof, perhaps with a separate, lower gable over the entrance, houses a worship space with a row of pews on each side of a center aisle and a raised platform at one end. A pulpit dominates the center of the platform, with seating for ministers at the back or sides of the platform, and a communion table in front of the pulpit on the main floor level. The side walls each have a row of tall windows, with glass that may be patterned or frosted, but not stained. The floor is raised several feet above grade to accommodate a basement for Sunday school classroom and fellowship hall use. Separate cloak rooms are provided for men and women; seating and even entrances may also be gender-divided. The entire building, inside and outside, is unornamented or has only the simplest of ornamental features.
While many such structures have been superseded by new buildings or obscured by major additions, many of us will recognize the above description as applicable to a majority of older Mennonite churches. However, aside from the absence of ornamentation, these buildings have much in common with rural American Protestant church architecture and were not significantly shaped by distinctively Mennonite theological reflection. This can be illustrated by the relative ease with which Mennonite congregations bought buildings previously used by other denominations, and adapted them with very little remodeling. (More recently, some congregations have bought buildings previously used for the worship of the American gods of commerce and industry; these buildings have required significantly greater remodeling!)
The lack of ornament typical of Mennonite meetinghouses of the last century had its origins in the teachings of simplicity, plainness, and separation. There was likely a practical side as well: better to use the limited funds to build a larger building than to "waste" money on mere decoration. Today, to the degree we shun ornamentation, it is more likely to be driven by global consciousness and identification with fellow believers in less prosperous parts of the country or the world, by conserving our resources in order to share with them.
Mennonite meetinghouses in Europe were not necessarily restricted in their ornamentation as were those in this country. As persecution of the Anabaptists gave way to toleration, church buildings were permitted but were required to be disguised as houses or other structures to prevent a passerby from attending a Mennonite church service by mistake. Increased prosperity was reflected in the interiors of the meetinghouses, which in some cases became quite lavish.
Formal, symbolic, meaningful
Ornament, of course, is not the only means of expressing a theological statement through architecture. The form of a building can also have symbolic implications. Forms may change over time, in response to the cultural and symbolic meanings attached to them, but they can and should be regarded as expressions of creativity to be employed in the service of the brotherhood. The cross-shaped plan mentioned previously is an obvious example; here are a few more that have been used in church buildings of various denominations:
- A restricted passage and low ceiling at the main entrance can symbolize the narrow gate through which we enter the kingdom of God.
- A baptistery near the entrance can express the importance of baptism in entering the church fellowship.
- High ceilings and vertical proportions can draw the worshippers' attention heavenward.
- A U-shaped seating layout that faces the long wall of a rectangular space can emphasize the fellowship of believers, as it becomes possible to see the faces of those across the room.
The last item above is sometimes mentioned by architectural historians as a distinctive characteristic of Mennonite meetinghouse form. In fact, some of the earliest immigrants to this country from separate branches of the Mennonite family (Pennsylvania, 1766 and Kansas, 1880) built structures similar to each other, with benches for ministers and song leaders along the long wall, facing the women seated opposite them; men were seated in rows along both end walls of the room. This arrangement allowed each of the men to see at least part of the face of up to 75% of the people present.
Today, most of us can only look at the back of the head of those seated in front of us-the form of the building forces our attention to the pulpit, and away from the gathered community of believers. Michigan architect Gunnar Birkerts found a creative solution to this problem for a Baptist church in Detroit: a strip of mirrors extends the full width of the wall above the pulpit, set at an angle so that each person can see a reflected view of her fellow worshippers.
A building that speaks
Contemporary religious buildings are built without the least regard to traditions, mystical reasons, or even common propriety. A room full of seats at the least possible cost is the present idea of a church.
-Attributed to Bertrand Hume, 19th century
A church building project is an opportunity to look beyond the practical considerations of cost and construction, without minimizing their importance, and even beyond the ministries that the facility can facilitate, to realize the values that can be conveyed through the form and arrangement of the building itself. This requires a leadership team and building committee that can articulate the unique characteristics and vision of the congregation. If this is not done, the resulting building will still convey a message-but it may not be an accurate reflection of the values and priorities of the congregation, and in the worst case may even be in conflict with them.
Some reasons that a message may be obscured or conflicting messages may arise:
- Construction may be driven by project budget, schedule, site configuration, and other constraints, without conscious theological reflection.
- Adopting or adapting architectural forms from other denominations without considering their implications.
- Multipurpose use of space reduces the building to the lowest common denominator of the competing uses.
I trust this article can be a means of encouraging us to give greater consideration to the opportunities for our church buildings to be shaped by, and to express, our beliefs and core values.
Leon Ruch lives in Hicksville, Ohio, and attends Hicksville Mennonite Church. He earned a B.S. in Construction from Purdue University and a Master of Architecture from the University of Illinois. Leon has assisted Rosedale Bible College in the design of its campus master plan.
Originally published in the May 2004 issue of the Brotherhood Beacon. Used by permission.