My reading of the liturgical sources and analyses of the architectural evidence demonstrated a powerful symbiosis between liturgy and architecture in Byzantine Church history. There was never a question of variation within this tradition, which I gleaned from my reading of Mango and his description of various church edifices throughout the Byzantine Commonwealth. In the scholarly community, however, the discussion focused on the relationship between liturgy and architecture, which conveniently suggested that architectural form follows liturgical function. My consultation of contemporary Catholic scholarship on liturgy and architecture yielded a similar result. Of course, such a conclusion makes sense because liturgy is what the community does when it gathers in its designated space. In my own limited experience, I learned that the contemporary descendants of the Byzantine rite modified the interior space of buildings they could afford to accommodate the liturgy they had inherited. Immigrants happily decorated the walls with icons and constructed iconostases of varying sizes and styles. During my tenure as music director at St. Mary Orthodox Cathedral in Minneapolis, we occasionally celebrated the Divine Liturgy at a local nursing home. On those monthly trips, we would bring icons of the Mother of God and Jesus and place them on music stands for a makeshift iconostasis, using a small, auxiliary table for the prothesis rite, separate and distinct from the altar. I recall a similar pattern of setup and takedown at Christ the Savior Orthodox mission in Anoka, Minnesota
After the monastic hegemony became complete in Byzantine liturgical history, the liturgy was somewhat reduced in its movements, with the monastery church becoming the primary model instead of the cathedral with its ambo, courtyard, and baptistery. The basic tripartite church structure of narthex, nave, and sanctuary, with an iconostasis dividing the nave from the sanctuary, remained reasonably constant, and came to America with the missionaries and immigrants beginning in the late eighteenth century. So the architectural heritage of American Orthodoxy retained some semblance of symbiosis with the liturgy, but this dynamic was weakened and continued to exist largely on the account of the need to have a basic space to celebrate the liturgy in accordance with its requirements.
This basic liturgy/architecture symbiosis existed in the churches I have described here, but as the reader can see from my brief descriptions, there were other factors contributing to the architectural design besides liturgy. In the case of St. Katherine, the community built a church closely resembling the Sophia cathedral in Kyiv, a manner of expressing community identity on the exterior. Furthermore, the parish constructed a cultural center and museum that is much larger than the church to accommodate its many nonliturgical activities and rituals. St. Katherine was an exception to the axiom of form following function since the architectural program expressed multiple community identities and priorities besides the liturgy. St. Matthew’s architectural design was inspired by the community’s dedication to promoting a strong lay ecclesiology while providing evangelistic outreach to the local community distinct from other Orthodox communities in the area. St. Matthew’s priorities were likewise inscribed on its architectural design, and while its blueprint and rationale differs significantly from that of St. Katherine, St. Matthew is also an exception to the form/ function axiom.
These initial observations formed by my limited experience in the two parish communities motivated me to study the issue further. I began with a series of questions: What is the status of the architectural form/function axiom in American Orthodox structures? If parish communities inscribe their values on their architectural programs, what are those values and how do they blend with the liturgical elements of ecclesial architecture? Given the increasing theological and ecclesiological plurality in American Orthodoxy, is it possible to identify a trend in American Orthodox architecture, and if so, should one promote it? These are the questions I intend to pursue in this study.
This study profiles seven contemporary Eastern Orthodox communities in the United States, and analyzes how their space and architecture shapes their liturgical celebrations and ecclesial identities. It begins with an introductory presentation on the historical development of Orthodox architecture, primarily focusing on the post-iconoclastic synthesis emerging in the Middle Byzantine period. I discuss the reciprocal relationship between architecture and liturgy by addressing topics such as stational liturgy, the mobility of the assembly, the relationship between celebrants and assembly, placement of singers, and festal processions (such as Holy Week and Pascha) representative of the Orthodox liturgy. A theological synthesis of the dialogical relationships between architecture, liturgy, and the specific contexts of the parish communities is offered as a foundation. I then focus on the seven Orthodox communities in America that purchased or constructed their own properties. The people constituting these communities are quite diverse, as are their regions, socioeconomic contexts, and particular ecclesial identities.
excerpted from the introduction