Sitting in Church

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