| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Anne C. Loveland and Otis B. Wheeler. From Meetinghouse to Megachurch: A Material and Cultural History. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. 2003. Pp. x, 307. $59.95.

The religious articulation of space among evangelical, fundamentalist, and Pentecostal Protestants, all of whom insist that space is not intrinsically sacred, is a topic that deserves scrutiny, especially by such Protestants in the present. Among these groups space is often keyed to the purpose of signage and tasked with competing in the larger marketplace for potential believer-customers. But as Anne C. Loveland and Otis B. Wheeler show, this does not mean that space is without explicitly religious purposes. Styles of worship and preaching cultivated by American revivalists through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries strongly preferred spaces that would allow them to engage their audiences in a direct and intimate manner, to see them eye to eye. The audiences, for their part, were able to hear very clearly and to sit with increasing proximity to the expansive platforms that came to structure sightlines. Convenience and effectiveness drove much Protestant church design to emulate theaters and auditoriums.

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