There has been an enormous resistance to Modernism, felt perhaps most keenly in regard to church spaces. Modernist buildings have been called “reductionist”, “oppressive,” “weird” and “ugly”. (Religious critics of Modernist church buildings remark on the atheism, agnosticism, or at least the Protestantism of the architects of the period.)

This resistance comes, in part, from the way that Modernism challenged both the previous style and the religious assumptions embedded in it.

The mid-19th century Gothic Revival, codified by the well-meaning John Ruskin, taught churchgoers an architectural language of church structure, which in Modernist buildings is entirely absent. In the United States, Gothic Revival and other shorter-lived architectural styles have examples from the lovely to the grotesque to the ridiculous. The years following the Gothic Revival had a few styles of note, but none of these movements was as broadly successful as Modernism.

Modernism eschews ogees and roundels, domes and niches, colored glass, soaring vaults, buttresses, and overwhelming decoration. It expresses serenity, individuality, intellectualism, and meditative focus with new shapes, spaces, and light.

Frank Lloyd Wright, an outspoken architectural genius and also a Unitarian, designed many beautiful Unitarian Universalist churches. He once said that the upward reach of church steeples was a misdirection based on “anxiety” about heaven.

The intentional stripping-away of ornament in Modernism creates a new kind of space that focuses the viewer inward, to contemplation, calm, and stillness. There is little to distract the viewer. As a result, it expresses serenity, individuality, intellectualism, and meditative focus with new shapes, spaces, and light.

University of Washington scholars Grant Hildebrand and T. William Booth say that Modernist architects, at least in the US, were informed by Emerson, Thoreau, and Horatio Greenough, who all argued that to revive the gothic in church buildings was inauthentic.

Modernism was a response to all that preceded it and more: it was an intentional desire to create something new for the modern era. As an example of Modernist architecture, our building informs our individual spiritual lives, encouraging us to seek meaning within its walls and within ourselves. It houses and feeds us. Our building is a living thing. And like any living thing, it groans with age in some places. But it is a beautiful space in which to quietly contemplate our spiritual lives and how we may live them more fully.