Church





The word church has several meanings, including:

   * A Christian building of worship. See altar, altar rails, confessional,
     dome, nave, pew, pulpit, sanctuary, lych gate.
   * An assembly of Christian believers who worship together. This is one
     translation of the Greek Koine word "Ecclesia," used in the New
     Testament, and is the sense used by many Christians.
   * In Christian theology, the Body of Christ composed of Jesus Christ and
     all Christians, living and dead. This is another sense of the word used
     in the New Testament, also used by the Nicene and Apostles' Creeds
     ("... one holy catholic and apostolic church ..."), and the sense used
     by many Christians.
   * A religious organization or denomination within Christendom (such as
     the Catholic Church or Lutheran Church).
   * The name of logician Alonzo Church (famous for the Church-Turing
     thesis)

Several non-Christian religious groups also use the word "church" in
self-reference, as the Church of All Worlds and the Church of Scientology.
The term is, however, not generally used by Muslim, Jewish, or Hindu groups
for either the worshipers or the building. See mosque, synagogue, and temple
for buildings of worship of these and other faiths.

The remainder of this article discusses church buildings as an element of
Christian worship.

Origins of Christian Places of Worship

The architecture of Christian worship space grew out of the regular meetings
of the followers of Christianity in private houses and synagogues. When
either the size of the community outgrew the space or the complexity of the
uses of the space outpaced the architectural adaptation of houses, buildings
began to be built specifically for worship (This became much more feasible
and common when Constantine stopped the Roman persecution of Christians in
the early fourth century.). As Christianity grew away from its roots in the
first century, Christians became ever more enamored with heathen (pagan)
philosophies and ornate places of worship.

Over time, what came to be known as "The Holy See" in Rome, declared many
pagan traditions clean if given a new "Christian" name in order to
facilitate the conversion of heathens. As a result, one of the things they
adopted was the ornate architecture of their places of worship. Originally
called "churches" to indicate a congregation, the name eventually came to
represent the building itself, and as the term became more archaic and
unrecognizable to the lay people, its original meaning became all but forgotten.

In The First Century

The first Christians were, like Jesus, Jews resident in Palestine who
worshipped on occasion in the Temple in Jerusalem and weekly in local
synagogues. Temple worship was a ritual involving sacrifice, occasionally
including the sacrifice of animals in atonement for sin, offered to Yahweh.
The New testament includes many references to Jesus visiting the Temple, the
first time as an infant with his parents.

The early history of the synagogue is controverted, but it seems to be an
institution developed for public Jewish worship during the Babylonian
captivity when the Jews did not have access to the Jerusalem Temple for
ritual sacrifice. Instead, to give a rough summary, they developed a daily
and weekly service of readings from the Torah or the prophets followed by
commentary. This could be carried out in a house if the attendance was small
enough, and in many towns of the Diaspora that was the case. In others more
elaborate architectural settings developed, sometimes by converting a house
and sometimes by converting a previously public building. The minimum
requirements seem to have been a meeting room with adequate seating, a case
for the Torah scrolls, and a raised platform for the reader and preacher.

Jesus himself participated in this sort of service as a reader and
commentator (see Gospel of Luke 4: 16-24) and his followers probably
remained worshippers in synagogues in some cities. However, following the
destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70, the new Christian movement and
Judaism increasingly parted ways. The Church became overwhelmingly Gentile
sometime in the second century.

For the history of how services take place within a church, see worship or
do a search on any particular religion that you might be interested in.

Early Examples of Church Architecture

The Syrian city of Dura Europos on the West bank of the Euphrates was an
outpost town between the Roman and Parthian empires. During a siege by
Parthian troops in A.D. 257 the buildings in the outermost blocks of the
city grid were partially destroyed and filled with rubble to reinforce the
city wall. Thus were preserved and securely dated the earliest decorated
church and a synagogue decorated with extensive wall paintings. Both had
been converted from earlier private buildings.

The church at Dura Europos has a special room dedicated for baptisms with a
large baptismal font.

A common architecture for churches is the shape of a cross (a long central
rectangle, with side rectangles, and a rectangle in front for the altar
space or sanctuary). These churches also often have a dome or other large
vaulted space in the interior to represent or draw attention to the heavens.
Other common shapes for churches include a circle, to represent eternity, or
an octagon or similar star shape, to represent the church's bringing light
to the world. Another common feature is the spire, taken from the model of
ancient temples of fertility gods and goddesses.