How do we understand religious spaces? What is their role or function within specific religious traditions or with respect to religious experience? This handbook brings together thirty-three essays addressing these questions using a range of methods and approaches to examine specific spaces or types of spaces around the world and across time. The authors here represent and draw upon many disciplines: religious studies and religion, anthropology, archaeology, architectural history and architecture, cultural and religious history, sociology, geography, gender and women's studies and others. Their essays are snapshots, each offering a specific way to think about the religious space(s) under consideration: Roman shrines, Jewish synagogues, Christian churches, Muslim and Catholic shrines, indigenous spaces in Central America and East Africa, cemeteries, memorials, and more. Some overarching principles emerge from these snapshots. The authors demonstrate that religious spaces are simultaneously individual and collective, personal and social; that they are influenced by culture, tradition, and immediate circumstances; and that they participate in various relationships of power. These essays demonstrate that religious spaces do not simply provide a convenient background for religious action but are also constituent of religious meaning and religious experience; they play an active role in creating, expressing, broadcasting, maintaining, and transforming religious meanings and religious experiences. By learning how religious spaces function, readers of this collection will gain a deeper understanding of religious life and religions themselves.

Jeanne Halgren Kilde's survey of church architecture is unlike any other. Her main concern is not the buildings themselves, but rather the dynamic character of Christianity and how church buildings shape and influence the religion. Kilde argues that a primary function of church buildings is to represent and reify three different types of power: divine power, or ideas about God; personal empowerment as manifested in the individual's perceived relationship to the divine; and social power, meaning the relationships between groups such as clergy and laity. Each type intersects with notions of Christian creed, cult, and code, and is represented spatially and materially in church buildings.
Kilde explores these categories chronologically, from the early church to the twentieth century. She considers the form, organization, and use of worship rooms; the location of churches; and the interaction between churches and the wider culture.
Church buildings have been integral to Christianity, and Kilde's important study sheds new light on the way they impact all aspects of the religion. Neither mere witnesses to transformations of religious thought nor simple backgrounds for religious practice, church buildings are, in Kilde's view, dynamic participants in religious change and goldmines of information on Christianity itself.

In late 19th century America, profound socio-economic and technological changes contributed to the rejection of traditional church architecture and the development of a radically new worship building, the neo-medieval auditorium church. These Protestant churches contained extraordinary new auxiliary spaces, including kitchens, dining rooms, and lounges. Their real showpieces, however, were always the sanctuaries, radial-plan auditoria best described as 'theatres', with their elaborate pulpit stages, sloping floors, and curving pews. Many contained proscenium arches, marquee lighting, and theatre seats. Jeanne Halgren Kilde focuses on how the buildings helped to negotiate supernatural, social, and personal power. Their extraordinary interiors, she says, profoundly altered religious power relations. Borrowed directly from the architecture of the theatre, these worship spaces underscored performative and entertainment aspects of the worship service. By erecting these buildings, argues Kilde, middle class religious audiences demonstrated the move toward a consumer-oriented model of a religious participation that gave them unprecedented influence over the worship experience and church mission.

For nearly eighteen centuries, two fundamental spatial plans dominated Christian architecture: the basilica and the central plan. In the 1880s, however, profound socio-economic and technological changes in the United States contributed to the rejection of these traditions and the development of a radically new worship building, the auditorium church. When Church Became Theatre focuses on this radical shift in evangelical Protestant architecture and links it to changes in worship style and religious mission.
The auditorium style, featuring a prominent stage from which rows of pews radiated up a sloping floor, was derived directly from the theatre, an unusual source for religious architecture but one with a similar goal-to gather large groups within range of a speaker's voice. Theatrical elements were prominent; many featured proscenium arches, marquee lighting, theatre seats, and even opera boxes.
Examining these churches and the discussions surrounding their development, Jeanne Halgren Kilde focuses on how these buildings helped congregations negotiate supernatural, social, and personal power. These worship spaces underscored performative and entertainment aspects of the service and in so doing transformed relationships between clergy and audiences. In auditorium churches, the congregants' personal and social power derived as much from consumerism as from piety, and clerical power lay in dramatic expertise rather than connections to social institutions. By erecting these buildings, argues Kilde, middle class religious audiences demonstrated the move toward a consumer-oriented model of religious participation that gave them unprecedented influence over the worship experience andchurch mission.