A lifetime ago I was a student at the Yale Divinity School and one of my teachers was Fr. Aidan Kavanagh, who wrote several important books, including major works on Christian Initiation and the Eucharist. I remember one of his lectures in which he discussed early liturgies in both the East and West. He mentioned that pews were never present. Instead, chairs would be arranged around the perimeter of the space for the elderly and pregnant women, but everyone else was expected to stand. This, he said, created a scenario in which kinetic energy was present, in a manner not unlike that of a cocktail party in which the dynamic was "many to many." He said that the later addition of pews bolted down to the floor killed the kinetic energy and replaced it with a scenario more akin to a lecture, in which the dynamic was "one to many," creating a very different kind of energy. His suggestion was to use cathedral chairs which could be moved around according to need. That sounded reasonable to me.