Church as public assembly

In his sociological history of Christian worship, Martin Stringer examines the process of “Christianization” in the early church as a process of Christian colonization of space. Among other things, he notes that “Christian architecture differed in a number of significant ways from the religious architecture of pagan religions. Most pagan temples contained a small inner sacred space that was restricted to the priests, and were surrounded by more public arcades, walkways, and squares. For the Christians the inner space had to contain the whole Christian congregation and the basic shape of the building came to follow that of the basilica, or public hall, rather than that of the temple.”

This is fascinating on a number of levels, but one point for now: Christian places of worship resembled civic buildings more than pagan temples. That’s because the church was arriving on the scene as a new city, not merely a new cult.