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Concept
Church (building)
Summary
A church, church building, or church house is a building used for Christian worship services and other Christian religious activities. The earliest identified Christian church is a house church founded between 233 and 256.
Sometimes, the word church is used by analogy and simplicity for the buildings of other religions, such as mosques and synagogues. Church is also used to describe a body or an assembly of Christian believers, while "the Church" may be used to refer to the worldwide Christian religious community as a whole.
In traditional Christian architecture, the plan view of a church often forms a Christian cross with the center aisle and seating representing the vertical beam and the bema and altar forming the horizontal. Towers or domes may inspire contemplation of the heavens. Modern churches have a variety of architectural styles and layouts. Some buildings designed for other purposes have been converted to churches, while many original church buildings have been put to other uses. From the 11th through the 14th centuries, there was a wave of church construction in Western Europe.
The word church is derived from Old English cirice, "place of assemblage set aside for Christian worship", from the Proto-Germanic kirika. This was probably borrowed via the Gothic from the Greek kyriake (oikia), kyriakon doma, "the Lord's (house)", from kyrios, "ruler, lord". Kyrios in turn comes from the Proto-Indo-European language root meaning "to swell".
The Greek kyriakon, "of the Lord", was used of houses of Christian worship since 300 AD, especially in the East, although it was less common in this sense than ekklesia or basilike.
The earliest archeologically identified Christian church is a house church (domus ecclesiae), the Dura-Europos church, founded between 233 and 256.
In the second half of the 3rd century AD, the first purpose-built halls for Christian worship (aula ecclesiae) began to be constructed. Although many of these were destroyed early in the next century during the Diocletianic Persecution.
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