Building Faith: A Sociology of Religious Structures

Building Faith: A Sociology of Religious Structures

by Robert Brenneman and Brian J. Miller

Oxford University Press, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-19-088344-7

(Amazon)

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"Rabbi Hama bar Hanina and Rabbi Hoshaiah were walking through the synagogue of Lod. Rabbi Hama bar Hanina said to Rabbi Hoshaiah: 'How much money did my forefathers invest here!' He answered him, 'How many souls did your forefathers invest here, there is no one in here who studies Torah! 

"Rabbi Abun made door for the main house of study. Rabbi Mana came to him and he said, 'Look what I did." He told him, 'Israel forgot its Creator and built palaces.' (Hosea 8:14) Were there no people who study Torah?" (Jerusalem Talmud Shekalim 5:4) 

The start of this book has a chapter entitled "What Religious Buildings Do," which contains a section titled "Why Buildings Matter." These are subjects that are of great interest to me, and the authors rightly point out that "Religious buildings are material objects created by humans that also interact with and shape social groups in unique ways." This is true of all buildings, so it's not a particularly profound observation, but attempting to identify the ways in which a religious buildings specifically does this is an interesting subject for a book. The chapter explains that a religious building can communicate particular values to those inside and out, help bring people together to worship communally, and influence the manner in which that worship takes place. Interestingly, the authors point out that a building allows a person today to influence the future. One cannot change a building so easily, so what a congregation chooses to construct its space today will continue to influence the congregation for years to come. 

Unfortunately, after this first chapter I found the rest of the book underwhelming. I guess I'm not into sociology. Subsequent chapters consist of case studies, which seem to represent only a small data set from which to reach conclusions about so broad a topic. This is the type of information that seems to be far more sect-specific than the authors admit. 

The authors do ask interesting questions, but at several points I found myself wondering how the data would look for different Jewish denominations. The authors discussed the reuse of churches in Detroit, for example, and the subject of reuse of Jewish synagogues and temples, and shifting population centers, is a fascinating case study but was plainly not the subject of this book. I believe most of the conclusions they reach, but only because they are largely self-evident. While mildly interesting, the case studies do not seem sufficient to PROVE the points the authors are making, nor to convince me that the lessons apply across the board. This is acknowledged toward the end of the book, when the authors write that "our evidence is not enough to propose a grand theory of religious buildings that would hold across all countries and religious traditions." Such a theory probably does not exist. But to me this leaves the book with a rather thin thesis and little to back it up.