Ideas and built environments

Built environments – in this case, churches – provide a concrete venue to experience media ecology. While many often think of communication media or ideas as the ‘stuff’ of media ecology, architecture also serves as a physical environment, a media environment and a ideational environment. Beginning with Ong’s ‘writing reshapes consciousness’, this pedagogy piece explores how Christian architecture shapes Christian theology. Church buildings offer visual images, aural experience, spatial orientation, verbal and nonverbal human cues and ritual expressions of Christianity. The course described here shows how the location can instruct students in both media ecology and theology.