"Outcry Against Ugly Churches"

Today's edition of The New York Times has a piece titled, "A Return to Architectural Traditions," by Brenda Goodman, that reports on the revival of traditional religious architecture in the United States:

It is a response to a kind of a bland, boxy building made popular in the 1960s that Richard Kieckhefer, professor of religion at Northwestern University and author of “Theology in Stone: Church Architecture from Byzantium to Berkeley” (Oxford University Press 2004), refers to as the “modern communal church.”

“In the mid-20th century, there were liturgical reformers who said it was necessary to change church architecture,” Dr. Kieckhefer said.

“Architects began to design churches that were meant to promote a sense of community gathered for celebration,” he added. “While older churches tried to set themselves apart from the world, these were buildings that were meant to blend into neighborhoods.”

These buildings were focused around casual, multipurpose spaces. Pastors asked architects for assembly halls that would allow members and clergy members to be able to see one another’s faces, so sanctuaries were often arranged in circles or semicircles. Pulpits were moved from the head of the church to the middle or done away with altogether. Statues were removed. Pitched roofs became flat. Steeples vanished.

Critics of the movement saw this trend toward plain, functional buildings as an insult to the divine. A flurry of books by influential architects and critics led the attack, including Michael S. Rose’s salvo, “Ugly as Sin: Why They Changed Our Churches From Sacred Spaces to Meeting Places and How We Can Change Them Back” (Sophia Institute Press, 2001), and Moyra Doorly’s “No Place for God: The Denial of Transcendence in Modern Church Architecture” (Ignatius Press, 2007).

Ms. Doorly, an architect and writer in Britain, has also started a campaign called Outcry Against Ugly Churches, or OUCH.

Read the entire piece.

• No Place for God: The Denial of Transcendence in Modern Church Architecture, by Moyra Doorly
• "Why Are There So Many Ugly Churches?" | An Ignatius Insight interview with Moyra Doorly
• A Great Building Disaster | by Moyra Doorly | An excerpt from From No Place For God
• More information about Doorly's "OUCH" campaign

Comments

[LPD]

One only has to read the words of Father Richard Vosko, self-named Designer and Consultant for Worship Environments, to know there is no longer any room for God. The following is on his website: "I believe that places for worship become sacred when the celebrations of life-cycle events occur there. In this sense the building is designed primarily to house the assembly and its worship of God. It is not an object of devotion by itself nor is it a temple to honor the deity. The fundamental blueprint for the building is found in the memories and hopes of the community."

[Ed Peters]

Man, talk about convicting the guilty with their own words. Thx, LPD. Great post.