Pictures in This Stunning Survey of Churches Make Words Irrelevant

You can review “Churches” by Judith Dupre with a single sentence: It is a visually stunning book.

This should be all the critique needed for a 2,000-year worldwide survey of church architecture, an art form that, in the words of architect and author Steven Schloeder, helps us “enter into the mystery of worship with our whole being--body and soul, will and intellect, memory and imagination, emotions and senses, to enhance the worship of Jesus Christ.”

Dupre’s coffee-table book features more than 200 arresting images--most of them photographs--that capture the magnificence of the highlighted cathedrals, churches and chapels. Game over. Worrying about the rest of the book’s contents, whether good or bad, is kind of like worrying about the flooring of the Sistine Chapel. But my editors frown upon single-sentence reviews, so let’s keep going.

Dupre, who has written two other architectural books (“Skyscrapers” and “Bridges”), has added a number of nice touches that complement the photos. Some are merely flashy window dressing: The quotes from Scripture and prayers run across the top of each page. Basic information about each church runs along the bottom. And the book’s cover--a photograph of Donatello’s “Annunciation” at Santa Croce in Florence--opens from the center, like a pair of church doors, to a breathtaking mosaic inside the domed roof of San Clemente in Rome.

Other features give the book more weight. The churches are organized chronologically, starting with the 2nd-century Pantheon in Rome and ending with the St. Thomas More church, constructed this year, at St. John’s University in New York.

Wedged in between are 57 churches of varying significance, including the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, begun in the 4th century, which tradition holds was built on the site of the tomb of Jesus, and Southern California’s own splashy Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, finished in 1980.

The architectural march through Christian history reflects “the impact of the triple agents of time, place and theology on their forms,” Dupre writes.

Floor plans of each church are provided, giving readers a better feel for the entirety of the structure, especially when coupled with the interior and exterior photographs.

Accompanying the images of each church is usually a single page of text, which gives the history of the building along with its architectural features. Here Dupre does an admirable job, for the most part, breaking down architectural jargon so information about the buildings’ structure is accessible to the average church lover. But it would have been nice to devote a page of the book to basic church architectural terminology so the novice would know the difference between a transept, an apse and a flying buttress.

Still, the descriptions provide a wide range of information about the churches, their architects and parishioners, and their place in history.

For example, Dupre tells us that the Chartres Cathedral’s 345-foot-high spire in France, finished in the 13th century, “is the equivalent of a 30-story skyscraper, a feat barely comprehensible given the builders’ rudimentary tools--straight edge, compass and string.”

And that the Old Ship Meetinghouse in Hinghamm, Mass., the oldest framed house of worship in America, was built by congregants. “[E]veryone ‘above the age of 20 years’ was expected to help, their efforts bolstered by 19 barrels of hard cider provided for the occasion.”

(An excellent companion work to “Churches” is Ken Follett’s brilliant “Pillars of the Earth,” a 983-page epic about an English priest’s efforts to build a cathedral in the 12th century. The novel, with all its political intrigue, marauding armies and detailed accounts of church building, brings to life the characters who would have filled the pews of many of the churches in Dupre’s book.)

The faults of “Churches,” though irritating, are hardly foundational--more like a picture that’s hung slightly crooked. The book starts with a lengthy question-and-answer interview with Swiss architect and church designer Mario Botta. It seems so out of place with the rest of the material that you might suspect the interview was there so Botta’s marquee name can appear on the cover.

Also, faced with the impossible task of selecting just 59 churches from Christianity’s 2,000-year history, Dupre errs by picking a third from the 20th century, creating a lopsidedness in the direction of modern architecture. You have to wonder how many of those churches would make the cut if the book were written 100 years, let alone a millennium, from now. But none of this detracts from the photographs that are the masterpieces of this book.