Nondenominationalism and Suburbia: Architecture, Religion, and Illusion

In: https://digitalcollections.saic.edu/islandora/object/islandora%3A120924

Abstract

Nondenominational Christianity is an increasingly significant phenomenon within American Protestantism. Its exponential prevalence in the US and globally during the second half of the 20th century is a byproduct of occurrences such as transformations in the religious landscape––most notably the rise of Evangelicalism––neoliberal economic policy, and the sociopolitical and cultural aftermath of the 1960s. The nondenominational church is one that, by definition, is separate from specified denominations, creeds, and traditions within Christendom, untethered to the bureaucracies of other religious orders. This essay posits a theory of nondenominational aesthetics to better understand the existence of these spaces and their impact, asking, how can this proliferation be analyzed through a focus on architecture, aesthetics, and long standing discourse regarding the relationship between the built environment and society? Borrowing from historical analyses of domestic architecture and American suburbanism, this paper comparatively investigates nondenominational aesthetics via suburban frameworks for design and social order. Through this nondenominationalism and suburbia are both categorized as operations in housing; manufacturers of dwellings. The model home and the McMansion parallel the church plant and the megachurch as subjective dwellings that seek to construct and consecrate sacred space. As nondenominationalism is seen as a housing project, so too is suburbanism analyzed as religion. Informed by religious studies scholarship seeking to understand religion in the context of American popular culture, this paper approaches nondenominationalism and suburbanism as analogous religious phenomena that are consequential in relation to issues of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and political struggle. A complex network exists between suburb and city; church and Christendom; home and work; individual and community. As these religious phenomena pervade social landscapes, what can be learned from their dwellings?