Sitting in Church

Giddens’ structuration theory suggests that social zoning orregionalization in worship services may occur on a front-to-back axis. To test thisprediction, we observed the seating of individuals (N = 3,426) at worship services overa 3-year period at 35 churches in three Protestant denominations: Southern Baptist,United Methodist, and Episcopalian. We found that persons seated in congregations arestructured into three zones front to rear. Earlier arrivers in church tend to sit in thefront region and late arrivers in the back region; this tendency is strongest in largecongregations and in small churches. The close fit to the data of a constrainedloglinear model (p = .65) provides evidence that all the hypothesized effects arepresent. We argue that Giddens’ and Goffman’s categories are validated by and helpfulfor understanding regions in worship, and that this understudied area of research hasvalue for understanding the sociology of religious congregations as well as structuringworship experiences and worship spaces