ABSTRACT
Modern church architecture edged onto the scene in Europe and America in the early twentieth century, boomed in the post–World War II decades, and its legacy lives on in contemporary church building. Protestants, Roman Catholics, and even Jews shared a vigorous international conversation about the future of ecclesiastical architecture, and as a result, the buildings of one tradition can be very like those of another. Modernism in architecture was both a manner of building and a philosophy that proposed design principles such as the honest use of materials and an engagement with contemporary culture. Even the architects and clients of relatively bland “modernistic” churches of the 1950s and 1960s often expected church architecture to address critical theological and social questions. The persistently derivative nature of modern church architecture was of great concern to one of its most articulate and theologically informed spokespersons, Minnesota architect and devout Lutheran Edward A. Sovik.
