What each Christian denomination LOOKS like

Why does Christianity sometimes look like this and sometimes look like this? It is because different Christian

denomination

s focus on different aspects of Christianity. Catholicism is very focused on the church as an institution, so its architecture conveys a sense of authority. It has many large structures that point upwards. that draws your eyes skyward and makes you feel small compared to the majesty of the church. It has many huge, beautiful cathedrals filled with statues of Catholic saints to remind people of the authority of the church leaders who have come. Before them, Baptists have the opposite point of view: they think that Christianity is mainly about a personal relationship with Jesus, so their architecture is very simple because they think that the center of our faith should be the Bible instead of the church as an institution, so they think that if a church is too ornate or beautiful it is a distraction that causes people to focus on the church more than on the Bible and a personal relationship with God.

Their architecture conveys direct access to God and their churches often look like simple houses because to them the church is primarily just a community. of individual believers Lutheran churches really have a strong sense of the sacred, the word sacred is the root of the word sacrament and the sacraments are very important to Lutheran theology, specifically the sacraments of baptism and communion, these are called means of grace where the infinite God condescends to our finite reality to give us salvation and eternal life and this is

what

actively happens during a worship service or a Divine Service as they call it, this is why the Lutheran tradition has such a tradition of sacred music great with composers like Bach and Handle who were stalwarts.

Lutherans themselves Presbyterian churches have a strong sense of purity. You generally won't find statues or icons on the walls. The walls will be very clean and plain because traditionally Presbyterians believe that the Second Commandment prohibits any image of God. This is why they developed a unique tradition of non-figurative stained glass where the stained glass windows will depict symbols and images from the Old Testament rather than images of Jesus. Also, their worship is highly regulated because they emphasize the sovereignty of God, so they want to avoid any worship that may be offensive to God, continental Reformed churches like the Netherlands and Switzerland are very similar to the Presbyterians, they have the same Calvinist theology but its aesthetics are much more elegant.

When you are in a traditional Dutch Reformed church, you almost feel like you are at a university because they have an exclusively academic approach to faith. For Dutch Reformed Christians, faith is largely an intellectual matter and no one is nerdier in their theological studies. that Dutch Reformed Christian Methodist churches convey a sense of humility, they are usually quite beautiful but it is a humble beauty, it is not an extravagant or flashy type of beauty, this is because Methodism is dedicated solely to serving the poor and to the community in general, so Christian humility makes its way into all aspects of their churches, also for

what

ever reason, John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement believed that octagons are the best shape for churches.

I have no idea why Eastern Orthodox architecture conveys a strong sense of tradition in any Eastern Orthodox church, you will find icons of Jesus and the saints plastered all over the walls and what that communicates is a connection to the past and a rootedness in the history. They believe that the saints of the church are still alive, they are still part of the church and they watch over the church from heaven and the icons on the church building show that they believe that their church is the continuation of the church founded by the early apostles and Christian leaders.

Eastern Orthodox churches are largely the same as Eastern Orthodox churches and have a traditional aesthetic, except they are a little more creative in their iconography because they didn't have as many. controversies surrounding icons, as the Eastern Orthodox had Anglicanism have a very eclectic style, meaning they take the best parts from other Christian traditions. They have many great Gothic cathedrals as do the Catholics. They have a lot of iconography just like the Orthodox. They have a lot of fancy Bibles, as do Protestants, this is because theologically Anglicanism is eclectic and Anglicanism started out as a via media or a middle way between Reformed and Catholic and naturally some Anglicans lean more Reformed and some Anglicans. they lean more Catholic because For Anglicanism, unity is more important than doctrinal purity.

Non

denomination

al churches have a very contemporary style of music and architecture and this makes sense because nondenominationalism is a very modern form of Christianity that really came into existence in the last 100 years. what it communicates is that the church is not stuck in the past but is active, alive and relevant, and the non-denominational style comes largely from Pentecostalism, which is about stimulating the senses. Pentecostalism is very focused on creating a passionate spiritual experience, so they try to have worship environments that can stimulate people's emotion, that's why they have things like blue lights and smoke machines and loud worship bands.

Really contemporary Christian music comes largely from Pentecostalism. Waker's churches, if they can be called churches, have an aesthetic of emptiness and this. It is because they do not pr

each

the word or administer the sacraments at all in their churches, all they do is meditate in silence and wait for some kind of personal revelation, they believe in the most direct and immediate access to God and that the mind needs to be completely Still. for that to happen, so the external appearance of churches is a visible communication of the internal beliefs on which they were founded.