They’re not always. But when they are, it’s because the Cross is where heaven and earth meet.
Orthodox church architecture isn’t arbitrary. The building teaches. When you walk into a cruciform church, the floor plan itself proclaims the gospel, Christ’s victory on the Cross becomes the very shape of the space where we worship. The four arms stretching out from the center represent creation gathered back to God through the Cross. The vertical axis points toward heaven. The dome above (often painted with Christ Pantocrator, the Almighty) shows us who reigns over it all.
St. John of Damascus and other Fathers wrote about the Cross as cosmic, not just historical. It’s the tree of life, the sign of triumph, the place where God’s love broke through to heal the world. So we build that sign into our churches. We stand inside it when we pray.
But here’s the thing: plenty of Orthodox churches aren’t cruciform at all. The early Christians used the Roman basilica, a long rectangular hall with an apse at the east end. Many Orthodox churches still use that plan. It works fine. Some churches are circular or octagonal, emphasizing the dome as an image of heaven descending. Others use what’s called a “cross-in-square” plan, where a domed cross sits within a square footprint. Russian churches developed their own variations with multiple domes rising above a cruciform base. Middle Eastern churches sometimes adapted local building traditions.
All of these are traditional. Orthodoxy doesn’t mandate one architectural form. What matters is that the building serves the liturgy and teaches the faith. The altar faces east toward the Resurrection. The iconostasis separates (and connects) the nave and the sanctuary. Icons cover the walls because the Church includes both heaven and earth. The architecture has to make that visible.
When Byzantine architects started building cruciform churches, they were solving a problem: how do you unite the vertical and horizontal? How do you show that Christ’s work on the Cross reaches up to heaven and out to the four corners of the earth? The cruciform plan with a central dome answered that question. The crossing, where the nave and transept meet, becomes the cosmic center. Stand there and you’re standing where Christ stood, where his sacrifice gathered everything back together.
This isn’t just symbolism for symbolism’s sake. The building shapes how we move and pray. Processions follow the cross. The clergy enter and exit through specific doors. The faithful stand in the nave, which is the body of the cross, looking toward the sanctuary. The architecture scripts the liturgy, and the liturgy fills the architecture with meaning.
I’ve noticed that folks coming from Baptist or non-denominational backgrounds sometimes expect church buildings to be purely functional, four walls and a sound system. That’s not wrong, exactly. But Orthodoxy sees the building itself as part of our worship. It’s catechetical. A child growing up in a cruciform church learns the centrality of the Cross before she can read. An adult standing in that space week after week absorbs the gospel through his feet and eyes, not just his ears.
St. Michael’s here in Beaumont isn’t a perfect cross from above, few American Orthodox churches are, given the constraints of property and budget. But the principle holds. When we gather, we’re gathering into the mystery of the Cross. The building doesn’t have to be grand. It just has to tell the truth.
If you visit an older Orthodox church, especially in Greece or Russia or the Middle East, you’ll see these principles worked out in stone and wood and plaster. The Greek cross-in-square plan is elegant and compact. Russian churches pile up domes like flames reaching toward heaven. Antiochian churches in Syria and Lebanon sometimes blend Byzantine forms with local architectural traditions, creating something both ancient and particular to that place.
The point isn’t to replicate one style everywhere. The point is that our buildings should proclaim what we believe: that the Cross is the center, that heaven and earth meet in Christ, that the Church is his Body stretched out across time and space. Whether the floor plan literally forms a cross or not, that’s what we’re trying to say.
Next time you’re at St. Michael’s, look around. Notice where the altar is, where the dome would be if we had one, how the icons line the walls. The building is preaching. Listen to it.
