A new poll shows that the unchurched (those who haven’t attended church for 6 months, except for religious holidays and special events) prefer traditional church architecture to contemporary looking churches, by nearly 2 to 1. And the interesting part of the survey? Young people ages 25-34 showed the greatest preference for traditional church architecture! I am almost 30, and even though I attended a church that architecturally resembled a conference center for about six months, even as an evangelical, I was strongly drawn to more traditional looking church buildings.
The authors of the survey admit that gothic and other traditional looking churches are still in decline. This is because factors other than exterior appearance influence the decision to attend a church, but nonetheless, it shows that despite claims for years that churches had to “look modern” to attract modern people, people still prefer traditional architecture. Hopefully surveys like this will encourage Catholic parishes and dioceses to look to the past when looking for church architectural design ideas, instead of assuming modern people want plain churches!
I am a little suspicious of this survey, and its implications, for a variety of reasons. First, like the authors of the study admit, the exterior look of a church probably doesn’t have a whole lot to do with church growth. Even if people prefer the look of a gothic cathedral, the evangelical mega-church next door to the gothic cathedral may very well be thriving while the cathedral is declining, because the evangelical church actually makes an effort to reach out to people! Second, people are unchurched for a variety of reasons, and basing our choices of architecture, worship, etc, on the unchurched raises serious problems. While we need to certainly reach out to those who are not churched, Christian practice and belief are not negotiable based on their appeal to the masses. Regardless, I think this survey shows that what some church leaders assume people want (the new, the innovative) is often different than what people actually want. As someone who prefers more traditional looking churches (although I am not interested in trashing all modern looking churches, or boycotting them, etc), I am glad to see others agree, even if they are unchurched!
Image from: friend.ly.net/~kellybr/ireland_2001/index.htm
David Bennett
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Fr. J.
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nicenehobbit
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papaz
April 26, 2008 at 11:02 pm
Worth noting (maybe)… Some of the large mega-church outfits here in the Midwest have achieved a certain distinctive feel to them… That is to say they are rather like conference centers but the amenities are such that they are rather impressive. One such large Pentecostal church had a truly impressive display of flags hanging of all the nations that they have churches in… As a Catholic I found that somewhat interesting inasmuch as they were rather iconoclastic otherwise, the flags seemed somewhat out of place.
Just as in years past there was a certain style of small white washed plain congregational churches one would associate with “Protestant churchiness” it may now be the case that the tide is turning so that future generations will have that ideal of large new-smelling, new-construction, bigger is better conference center-feel to it?