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A church building (or simply church) is a building used in [[Christian]] [[worship]]. Although the [[Church]] (the people that belong to [[Jesus]]) can meet anywhere, they have since early times built buildings specifically for worshipping [[God]] in. There are many well known church buildings around the world such as [[St. Peter's Basilica]] in [[Rome]]. A common architecture for churches is a building in the shape of a cross, often with a dome or other large vaulted space in the interior to represent or draw attention to the heavens.
===History of church buildings===
The first Christians were, like Jesus, Jews resident in Israel who worshiped on occasion in the Temple in Jerusalem and weekly in local synagogues.
Following the inclusion of non-Jews (Gentiles) into the church and later the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in [[AD 70]], Christianity and Judaism increasingly parted ways.
Many of these early Christians met in homes, sometimes called house-churches.
As the number of Christians grew during, numbers became too large to meet in houses, and congregations began to build or acquire buildings that were specifically for Christian worship. A number of pagan temples were converted into churches, especially following the adoption of Christianity as the state religion by the Roman Empire in the fourth century. A famous example of this is the [[Pantheon]] in [[Rome]], once used for a temple to pagan gods, it was later used as a church (it is now only a tourist attraction).
===Famous church buildings===
===Architecture types===
===Photos of churches===
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