When Church Became Theatre
Oxford University Press, 2002.
Hardcover, 310 pages, $45.00. ISBN 0195143418
By: Jeanne Halgren Kilde
Anyone interested in the history of worship in the
American church will find much of interest in Kilde’s volume. She
shows how changes in worship in the late 19th century produced a
major change in the types of church buildings being constructed, and
led to the “auditorium church” as a new model. The new architectural
approach, according to Kilde, marked a move “toward a consumer-oriented
model of religious participation.”