Review: The Suburban Church: Modernism and Community in Postwar America, by Gretchen Buggeln

Abstract

Gretchen Buggeln The Suburban Church: Modernism and Community in Postwar America Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015, 368 pp., 144 b/w illus. $140 (cloth), ISBN 9780816694952; $40 (paper), ISBN 9780816694969 The postwar suburban American church is a complicated subject. Religious buildings occupy a typological history largely driven by the interpretation of monuments, yet these churches tend instead toward a kind of mainstream vernacular. Their unassuming modernity challenges presumptions both of a heroic modernism overcoming tradition and of a conception of sacred space reliant on drama and transcendence. That they were built by congregations often newly formed as part of the postwar flight from cities makes relevant the many sources of contemporaneous and later criticism of suburban culture, from racial segregation to alienating sprawl to housewife drudgery and reactionary conformity in the face of a growing counterculture. Without a doubt, sociopolitical critique of suburban culture is part of the story, yet on its own it risks obscuring the actual experiences of those involved in designing, building, and using these places. The full story must engage both. In The Suburban Church: Modernism and Community in Postwar America , Gretchen Buggeln offers a solid, meticulously researched account of how these churches came to be, how their congregations understood and valued them, and (implicitly) how these experiences may complicate negative views of suburban culture driven by sociopolitical critique. Rich in detail, conveyed through lucid narratives and compelling anecdotes, and drawing throughout on archival documents and relevant contemporaneous discourses, this study approaches the subject with multiple frames and at changing scales. As the author clarifies at the outset, her aim is to produce not a “comprehensive history” but a “representative survey of …