Per Christum

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

One of my great interests/hobbies is to visit Catholic churches. One of the reasons why I like visiting churches is because I like church architecture and sacred art. Admittedly, I don’t like all architectural styles. In general, I prefer traditional church architecture over modern architecture.

Another thing I like to do is to travel. Unfortunately, I’m not able to travel much so I have to be content with looking at pictures of churches from around the world.

Anyway, for those interested, I have compiled this list of five metropolitan cathedrals which correspond to the top five nations in terms of the number of Catholics in that country. When I say “metropolitan cathedral”, I’m referring to the chief church of a nation. Read the rest of this entry »