Customer Reviews

When Church Became Theatre: The Transformation of Evangelical Architecture and Worship in Nineteenth-Century America

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The exterior and interior designs of church structures testify not only to economic standing and technological advances; they also witness to broader cultural changes and to the religious and social motivations of the builders. The disclosure of these motivations-and the meanings and values associated with the buildings themselves-is the subject of Kilde's study of nineteenth-century evangelical architecture. Of particular interest to her are the changing politics of space: statements of power, authority, and relationship (between God, clergy, and laity-and with "the world") made in stone, wood, and glass; the correlation of "sacred" and "secular" designs; and the reciprocal influences between the style or function of worship and the disposition of the space. Although Kilde's study progresses from the Federalist style at the beginning of the nineteenth century, to the Gothic revival at roughly mid century, and to the neomedieval auditorium at century's end, throughout she keeps an eye on the theater-style church and the (internal and external) dynamics that brought its increasing popularity. Particularly interesting was her treatment of buildings associated with revivalist Charles Grandison Finney as a case study on the emergence of the theater design from experiments in the early decades of the century. Helpful as well was her discussion of the ongoing evolution of the theater style as it adjusted to meet the needs of revivalism and of the family-oriented congregation.

Because of her multidisciplinary approach, Kilde's well-researched contribution will be valuable to scholars of architectural history, cultural studies, church history, and liturgical studies. But such a broad approach across fields sometimes results in an overgeneralization of specialist terminology. A liturgical scholar will find troubling the use of "cathedral" to mean a large building, false distinctions between "liturgical" and "non-liturgical," and reference throughout to the congregation as the "audience" even among evangelicals.

I found the history and illustrations found in this book unforgettable. I think of it every time I drive past a church now because I now understand so much more about what is embedded in the history of different forms of chuch buildings. The aim of the book is to explore the history of American Protestant architecture, but the real meat of the book is a marvelous guide to American church history as a whole. I learned a lot.

A new book that uses Kilde's contribution for understanding a vibrant church is called Hollywood Faith: Holiness, Prosperity, and Ambition in a Los Angeles Church. This church meets in a converted movie theater in Hollywood. The book shows how having church in a theater shapes the religion of the church. I highly recommend it.

A thoughtful, well written, and very informative examination of the development of the "auditorium church" in the late nineteenth century, along with some discussion of its decline and eventual resurgence in popularity in the twentieth century. Although the book is an excellent treatment of the subject, it does have, in my estimation, several weaknesses:
(1.) For a book that addresses an architectural subject, it doesn't have nearly enough illustrations - although because the author is a social and religious historian, instead of an architectural historian, this is understandable.
(2.) Because the book is concerned more with the origins of the auditorium church than with its spread, it focuses mostly on major churches in large Northern and Midwestern cities, and doesn't pay much attention to the spread of the auditorium church plan to smaller communities and the construction of auditorium churches in brick or wood instead of stone. The widespread adoption of the auditorium church in the South is scarcely alluded to at all.
(3.) In part because of that focus on Northern cities, the last chapter, addressing the decline of the popularity of the auditorium church, completely misses the entire phenomenon of the use of the auditorium plan in countless Neoclassical-style churches in the 1910s and 20s. The book asserts that the "neomedieval" auditorium churches were directly supplanted in popularity by churches exhibiting a more formal and liturgically-directed Neo-Gothic style as early as the 1910s. In the South, however, the adoption of Neo-Gothic architecture for evangelical churches did not become widespread until the late 1920s and early 1930s, after the Neoclassical style had been popular for two decades.
(4.) Again, because of the emphasis on major churches in Northern cites, little attention is given to the dissemination of auditorium church plans and their promotion by boards of church extension, especially by the Southern Baptist Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. The fact that Southern Baptists continued to build churches using the auditorium form into the 1920s is mentioned briefly in the last chapter (p. 214), but this is treated as if it were an exception to the national trend; and the architects who designed many of these churches, such as C.W. Bulger of Dallas, Tex., and R.H. Hunt of Chattanooga, Tenn., are not mentioned at all.
In summary, the book is an excellent examination of the origins and early development of the auditorium church, but it falls short as an exposition of the popularity of the auditorium church, as an architectural form, from a broader perspective.