Theology in Stone: Church Architecture from Byzantium to Berkeley (review)

Several recent publications regarding Catholic church architecture have been written by or about architects who champion a return to the aesthetics and plan configuration of churches that were built prior to Vatican Council II. These publications partly result from what the authors identify as the banal church architecture that liturgists have inflicted on America's Catholics during the last forty years in the name of the Council's reformed liturgy. While Richard Kieckhefer's purpose in Theology in Stone: Church Architecture from Byzantium to Berkeley is to address the tension between these viewpoints, he presents an evenhanded and well buttressed discussion of both camps' strengths and weaknesses. Although this book addresses the major aesthetic and theological traditions regarding church design within both the Eastern and Western branches of Christianity, its coverage of the current conflict among America's Roman Catholics is a prominent part of the text.

Kieckhefer, a professor of religion at Northwestern University, early in the study categorizes the main church building traditions as those of the classic sacramental church, the classic evangelical church, and the modern communal church. In the book's first four chapters, he analyzes each within the context of four experiential issues, i.e., spatial dynamics, centering focus, aesthetic impact, and symbolic resonance. As the book's subtitle states, examples of Christian church architecture dating from the fourth to the early twenty-first century are the vehicle for discussing the theology and history of these four issues. In these chapters, and throughout the book Kieckhefer's text is buttressed by extensive and often lengthy endnotes that are valuable resources for both amateur and seasoned scholars, but which at times elicit the surfeited character of a never ending Google online search. Large amounts of tangential information, presented not only in citations but within the main text, at times challenged this reader's ability to follow the author's argument in a linear manner.

The book's subsequent three chapters in a more straightforward historical presentation use specific locations and architects to address the relationship between church design and mainstream culture. The examples presented are England's medieval Beverley, post-1871 Chicago, and the church architecture and theory of Rudolf Schwarz (1897–1961). Kieckhefer uses these examples to respectively address the issues of Traditional Churches in Traditional Culture, Traditional Churches in Modern Culture, and Modern Churches in Modern Culture. The Chicago chapter exemplifies this text's richness in analyzing the variations that occurred in the church-building practices of Chicago's Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Evangelical Christian, Episcopal, and Eastern Orthodox communities, as well as the ecumenically accepted early-twentieth-century "Establishment Gothic" aesthetic.

Although the author early in the study identifies that he favors the longitudinally planned classic sacramental church, the book's final chapter is a plea for the "traditionalists" and "reformers" to renounce their dogmatic positions by engaging what Kieckhefer identifies as a dynamic orthodoxy that is loyal to tradition but open-ended in how that tradition addresses the reformers' valid concerns. While achieving that goal, like reading this study, is not a straightforward and easy proposition, both are certainly worth the effort. This book would do an excellent job of engaging the serious student, liturgist, architect, cleric, or lay person who is interested in the issue of contemporary church design in a manner that would dissipate much of the rancor that has characterized many of the more recent publications on this topic. One of the book's few omissions, considering its encyclopedic scope and the building's international prominence, is a discussion of Rome's Jubilee Church, Dio Padre Misericordioso. That omission may have resulted from Kieckhefer's accrued scholarly wisdom.