Includes bibliographical references and index.

"As physical structures that shape and constrain human interaction, religious buildings play a formative role in human communities across the globe. Yet social science has typically paid them little regard. This book applies a sociological perspective to the way religious buildings are shaped by the communities that conceive of and build them and how the same buildings act back on those human communities. Applying theoretical insights from the sociology of architecture, the sociology of religion, and interaction ritual chain theory, the authors examine religious buildings as profoundly social structures with lasting consequences for the persons and groups who designed, built, or adapted them and for those who gather inside them as well as those who live near them"--,Provided by publisher.