About The Center for Religious Architecture

Increasingly, our many inherited religious practices and belief systems help to define our individual place in the world. They often are an influence on where we live and work and how we raise our children; whether and how we participate in political issues and vote; how we view ourselves and relate to each other.

If then, we accept the idea that the organizational structure of each faith articulates both its own cultural boundaries as well as the relationship of each belief system to the society of the world, wouldn't our world society benefit positively by knowing and understanding more about the traditions of its many diverse members, how these beliefs were formed and how they are expressed?

The Center for Religious Architecture, the CRA, was established in part to be a supportive forum for the growing interfaith movement that promotes the study and understanding of the religious diversity that we cherish in America. One of the most creative forms that this diversity takes is in designing a house of worship. At its best and most articulate, religious architecture makes a visual statement about faith and its practices, and engages all of our senses in its purpose.

The study of these structures is an invaluable tool toward creating a vital interfaith dialog that brings together people of common goodwill into a world community of faith and respect. To enhance their study, we are creating large, highly detailed scale models of significant houses of worship with multi-media presentations of their interiors. This permanent collection will be housed in a Chicago-area location which will serve as a destination Museum, Resource Center and Reference Library. The Center will also serve as a shared source for books and videos, architectural drawings, blueprints, publications and other materials on the world's religions and representative structures.

With experts in their fields, the CRA is developing a lecture series on the major religions; participating in a touring program of model exhibits and seminars; collaborating with university schools of architecture in curriculum development and will serve as the starting point for tours to the world's prominent religious sites and cities, as well as those near Chicago.

We look forward to the future and toward contributing to a world community of mutual respect and genuine understanding.

Suzanne Morgan
Founder and President

The Center for Religious Architecture is a secular, publicly supported nonprofit organization, founded in Chicago in 2002.