Shaping the Assembly: How our Buildings Form Us in Worship

Space is all around us – and we constantly refer to it. He is taking my space! This place is homely! This room is very impersonal! We need more room!  We need to de-clutter! I was lost in the vastness of the hall! I felt locked in and had to go outside!

 We also know that how space is arranged affects us: we want ‘round table talks’ and we do not want to be put in the back row! Churchill captured the importance of built space in a couplet: We shape our buildings, then our buildings shape us. And in every society buildings have been used to project power and authority, to regulate society, and to project an image of how that group sees itself.

 Strangely, we out do not think about this aspect of space when it comes to liturgy – yet every religion (and every Christian denomination) has used buildings as part of their worship: from Newgrange to classical temples to churches build of steel, concrete and glass. And it was this concern of the Second Vatican Council that led to the changes in the arrangements in Catholic Churches in the 1960s and 70s. But this religious use of space – just as with the changes mandated by Vatican II – are little appreciated or understood.

 This book brings together nineteen Christians – liturgists, pastors, architects, artists – from several churches and from around the world who all try to answer the question of how space affects us in worship.

 The topics covered include the role of light in a religious building, the need for space to appreciate dance as part of worship, the varying needs of spaces for different liturgies, accounts of how communities have become creative with space, and questions about how the liturgical renewal begun in Vatican II should continue today.

Thomas O'Loughlin has been Professor of Historical Theology at the University of Nottingham since 2009. He has written twenty books and held various esteemed teaching positions in England, Ireland and Wales.