American Sacred Space
American Sacred Space

Author: David Chidester

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 1995-11-22

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 9780253210067

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In a series of pioneering studies, this book examines the creation—and the conflict behind the creation—of sacred space in America. The essays in this volume visit places in America where economic, political, and social forces clash over the sacred and the profane, from wilderness areas in the American West to the Mall in Washington, D.C., and they investigate visions of America as sacred space at home and abroad. Here are the beginnings of a new American religious history—told as the story of the contested spaces it has inhabited. The contributors are David Chidester, Matthew Glass, Edward T. Linenthal, Colleen McDannell, Robert S. Michaelsen, Rowland A. Sherrill, and Bron Taylor.

American Sanctuary
American Sanctuary

Author: Louis P. Nelson

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 0253218225

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This volume examines a diverse set of spaces and buildings seen through the lens of popular practice and belief to shed light on the complexities of sacred space in America. Contributors explore how dedication sermons document shifting understandings of the meetinghouse in early 19th-century Connecticut; the changes in evangelical church architecture during the same century and what that tells us about evangelical religious life; the impact of contemporary issues on Catholic church architecture; the impact of globalization on the construction of traditional sacred spaces; the urban practice of Jewish space; nature worship and Central Park in New York; the mezuzah and domestic sacred space; and, finally, the spiritual aspects of African American yard art.

A Sacred Space Is Never Empty
A Sacred Space Is Never Empty

Author: Victoria Smolkin

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2019-10-29

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 0691197237

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When the Bolsheviks set out to build a new world in the wake of the Russian Revolution, they expected religion to die off. Soviet power used a variety of tools--from education to propaganda to terror—to turn its vision of a Communist world without religion into reality. Yet even with its monopoly on ideology and power, the Soviet Communist Party never succeeded in overcoming religion and creating an atheist society. A Sacred Space Is Never Empty presents the first history of Soviet atheism from the 1917 revolution to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Drawing on a wealth of archival material and in-depth interviews with those who were on the front lines of Communist ideological campaigns, Victoria Smolkin argues that to understand the Soviet experiment, we must make sense of Soviet atheism. Smolkin shows how atheism was reimagined as an alternative cosmology with its own set of positive beliefs, practices, and spiritual commitments. Through its engagements with religion, the Soviet leadership realized that removing religion from the "sacred spaces" of Soviet life was not enough. Then, in the final years of the Soviet experiment, Mikhail Gorbachev—in a stunning and unexpected reversal—abandoned atheism and reintroduced religion into Soviet public life. A Sacred Space Is Never Empty explores the meaning of atheism for religious life, for Communist ideology, and for Soviet politics.

House of Worship
House of Worship

Author: Dominique Browning

Publisher: Assouline Books & Gifts

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13:

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Subject: Places of worship can inspire, evoke humility, bring together communities, or provide solace. In a richly illustrated volume of photographs featuring sacred spaces across America, House of Worship illustrates how through design a physical space becomes scared. Remarkable for an architecture that expresses spirituality, each of the structures represented in this book are notable in their design--and spirit. Included are great photographers' pictures of churches of various denominations, Buddhist temples, small chapels, mosques, and synagogues that are presented by inspiring informative texts

Secrets of Sacred Space
Secrets of Sacred Space

Author: Chuck Pettis

Publisher:

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781567185195

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Famous ancient stone monuments such as Stonehenge attract us because they surround sacred spaces filled with spiritual power. In Secrets of Sacred Space, Chuck Pettis reveals you can create similar sacred spaces of your own. You'll learn how to use the architecture of power to create earth and stone monuments that can help you find inner peace and renewal. Secrets of Sacred Space reveals how you can: ·Use geomancy, symbolism, numerology, and astronomical alignments to understand the ancient sacred sites and even design your own power places ·Easily perform dowsing with rods and pendulums to find water, ley lines, and earth energy lines to choose sacred sites and create your own sacred monuments ·Communicate with devas and other spiritual beings to discover a site's spiritual essence ·Design your sacred space in harmony with a site's spiritual essence ·Understand the powerful design cosmology of the Egyptian pyramids and other ancient monuments Sacred places of power move and enliven the soul. They take us to higher states of consciousness, inspire feelings of awe and wonder, and are places for retreat, self-renewal, and enlightenment. The making of the sacred space is as important, if not more important, than its use when complete. Building a sacred space — a cosmic monument — is a high form of meditation and the epitome of spiritual service. Discover the secrets of the earth and its special places when you read Secrets of Sacred Space.

Landscapes of the Secular
Landscapes of the Secular

Author: Nicolas Howe

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2016-09-05

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 022637680X

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“What does it mean to see the American landscape in a secular way?” asks Nicolas Howe at the outset of this innovative, ambitious, and wide-ranging book. It’s a surprising question because of what it implies: we usually aren’t seeing American landscapes through a non-religious lens, but rather as inflected by complicated, little-examined concepts of the sacred. Fusing geography, legal scholarship, and religion in a potent analysis, Howe shows how seemingly routine questions about how to look at a sunrise or a plateau or how to assess what a mountain is both physically and ideologically, lead to complex arguments about the nature of religious experience and its implications for our lives as citizens. In American society—nominally secular but committed to permitting a diversity of religious beliefs and expressions—such questions become all the more fraught and can lead to difficult, often unsatisfying compromises regarding how to interpret and inhabit our public lands and spaces. A serious commitment to secularism, Howe shows, forces us to confront the profound challenges of true religious diversity in ways that often will have their ultimate expression in our built environment. This provocative exploration of some of the fundamental aspects of American life will help us see the land, law, and society anew.

Sacred Space, Sacred Sound
Sacred Space, Sacred Sound

Author: Susan Elizabeth Hale

Publisher: Quest Books

Published: 2013-11-01

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 0835630706

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Visionary singer Susan Hale believes that early peoples deliberately built their structures to enhance natural vibrations. She takes us around the globe-from Stonehenge and New Grange to Gothic cathedrals and Tibetan stupas in New Mexico-to explore the acoustics of sacred places. But, she says, you don't have to go to the Taj Mahal: The sacred is all around us, and we are all sound chambers resonating with the One Song.

Sacred Power, Sacred Space
Sacred Power, Sacred Space

Author: Jeanne Halgren Kilde

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2008-07-21

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 0199718105

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Jeanne Halgren Kilde's survey of church architecture is unlike any other. Her main concern is not the buildings themselves, but rather the dynamic character of Christianity and how church buildings shape and influence the religion. Kilde argues that a primary function of church buildings is to represent and reify three different types of power: divine power, or ideas about God; personal empowerment as manifested in the individual's perceived relationship to the divine; and social power, meaning the relationships between groups such as clergy and laity. Each type intersects with notions of Christian creed, cult, and code, and is represented spatially and materially in church buildings. Kilde explores these categories chronologically, from the early church to the twentieth century. She considers the form, organization, and use of worship rooms; the location of churches; and the interaction between churches and the wider culture. Church buildings have been integral to Christianity, and Kilde's important study sheds new light on the way they impact all aspects of the religion. Neither mere witnesses to transformations of religious thought or nor simple backgrounds for religious practice, church buildings are, in Kilde's view, dynamic participants in religious change and goldmines of information on Christianity itself.

Searching for Sacred Space
Searching for Sacred Space

Author: John Ander Runkle

Publisher: Church Publishing, Inc.

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 9780898693713

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Every Sunday we walk through those doors and enter a sacred space. It is familiar, maybe comforting--or maybe not. It might be downright uncomfortable and unwelcoming. What can we do about it? In twelve thoughtful and provocative essays, the writers ask important questions about the relationship between sacred spaces and the worship that takes place in them: -How do our buildings convey a vision of God's kingdom on earth? -How are our places of worship reflecting our beliefs? -In what visible, tangible forms are we proclaiming a faith in the living God? -How are our church buildings helping this church bring the Gospel into a new century?

Landscapes of the Sacred
Landscapes of the Sacred

Author: Belden C. Lane

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 9780801868382

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This substantially expanded edition of Belden C. Lane's Landscapes of the Sacred includes a new introductory chapter that offers three new interpretive models for understanding American sacred space. Lane maintains his approach of interspersing shorter and more personal pieces among full-length essays that explore how Native American, early French and Spanish, Puritan New England, and Catholic Worker traditions has each expressed the connection between spirituality and place. A new section at the end of the book includes three chapters that address methodological issues in the study of spirituality, the symbol-making process of religious experience, and the tension between place and placelessness in Christian spirituality.