Here's an excerpt from some of my research involving the Protestant
Megachurch that will help you understand what I mean when I say "sacred space." You're right to point out that the term can be rather ambiguous. Sorry; I didn't coin it. Here's what I mean when I employ the phrase. I've
bolded the two most important statements.
A Very Brief Historiography of Sacred Space
The study of sacred space as its own viable academic discipline is a recent and controversial phenomenon. The earliest and often most debated voice in the field is
Mircea Eliade, the Romanian born historian of religion, who in his seminal work, The Sacred & The Profane,
[1] defined spaces as "modes of being" in tension with one another. For
Eliade, space is an ontological category of existence: sacred space is in opposition to profane space. In this dualistic view, the former is captivating, stimulating, even efficacious, while the latter is humdrum, vague, and represents "absolute nothing."
[2] The crux of
Eliade's argument lies in the way in which he explains the sacred as, "expressions or '
heirophanies' that 'irrupt' into our world apart from human agency."
[3] Eliade argues that in every past age our ancestors experienced space and its efficacy from time to time in ways which were tailored to their own presuppositions and familiarity. They were subsequently moved by their experiences; their emotions were stirred.
Eliade tells us that early religious man (his term) was so moved to perpetuate the sacred experience that, upon straying from the sacred realm, "he [the worshipper] feels emptied of his
ontic substance, as if he were dissolving into chaos, and he finally dies."
[4] Being removed from the sacred space itself, and therefore being deported from the feeling of ultimate, for
Eliade's early man at least, is tantamount to death. And it was sacred space, of course, that governed, facilitated, and even sparked this ritual event. It is obvious that
Eliade considers the sacred to be very powerful.
Although Eliade is guilty of over-romanticizing indigenous peoples for whom we cannot empirically observe and overly dichotomizing and thus overly-simplifying the entire argument, he does lay the crucial groundwork for disencumbering what may appear to be the illusive tendencies of sacred space. His well-known monograph, The Sacred & The Profane (quoted above), effectively admits that a space’s sacrality is intricately attached to one major point: the visitor’s own experience of their own perception of and relation to the ultimate. A good experience of the ultimate, whatever it was perceived to be at the time of their encounter, aroused a passion for lingering and perpetuating the event. The person wanted to remain in the midst of what he or she perceived as sacred, and this is only natural. While Eliade does provide the crucial groundwork for understanding sacred space, he overlooks the human ability to erect and manipulate sacred spaces. For this reason, scholars continue to confront and debate many of his axioms.
David
Chidester and Edward T.
Linenthal, promising to "subvert
Eliade's axioms,"
[5] have re-vivified the dialogue. Boldly declaring that no sacred space in the world is "merely given," they have suggested that, "[sacred space] is claimed, owned, and operated by people advancing specific interests."
[6] Crucial to their research is the theory that humans assign
sacrality and are not always at the mercy of some divine
inbreaking (i.e.,
Eliade's heirophanies). Working with the same presupposition, Louis P. Nelson in American Sanctuary: Understanding Sacred Spaces, develops three common characteristics of sacred space: inscription, identity, and instability.
[7] Each of Nelson's monikers highlight what was previously mistreated in the field. Namely, the human ability to inscribe (i.e.,
sacralize any given place), the way in which spaces are wed to any given "political identity," and the fact that sacred meanings change over time.
[8] Without Nelson's insight, the
megachurch would remain mysterious and challenging. Because of his work and the work of scholars arguing for a more situational view of sacred space, we come now to demystify the
megachurch.
Space as Meaning-Making
We shape our buildings and ever after they shape us. - Sir Winston Churchill
[9]Space, as cultural geographer
Yi-
Fu Tuan has concluded, “is a fundamental character of human experience.”
[10] Given
Yaweh's rather blunt instructions to Moses (Exodus 3:5), sacred space certainly seems to have been on God's mind too. Thus, those in the
Judeo-Christian tradition have a long history of respecting spaces; their sacred books are replete with sacred settings and commands thereupon. Nevertheless, sacred or otherwise, space is that great and overreaching rubric under which we come to explore, understand, and make-meaning in our surroundings.
The fundamental characteristic of any sacred space is that it must convey a sense of or provide a way to the ultimate. Nancy
DeMott, Tim Shapiro, and Brent Bill, co-authors of Holy Places: Matching Sacred Space With Mission and Message, remind us, "The term 'sacred space' is not meant to confer a particular aesthetic or assume a particular theological position,"
[11] This sense, then, despite past claims by influential theorists and theologians (such as Rudolph Otto), does not have to surprise, fascinate, nor intimidate in order to be ultimate. Spaces that do not mimic Chartres Cathedral, the Washington National Cathedral, or the shrines of Mecca and Medina for that matter can in fact be inscribed with sacred attributes. Jon
Pahl, a Lutheran theologian, has proposed that sacred spaces are:
literal or figurative places that function to orient, disorient, and reorient people symbolically. They often operate unconsciously; their function is usually masked, obscured, or mystified. People visit them, but may not be able to explain why, and may resist any functional explanation of their behavior. Nevertheless, they relate to how people find or make symbolic meaning in a particular culture, sacred places are held in high symbolic value: it is usually taboo to profane or desecrate them, and people have often sacrificed, fought, killed, or died for them.[12]Naturally, with a
Pahl's definition, the weight of the argument is somewhat cast on
ultimate, which unfortunately in post-modernity does not have to presuppose an other worldly god (or gods). Similarly, though it can, a sacred space does not have to commemorate or mark the in breaking of the divine to become sacred either. Often times, what on the surface may seem very ordinary and mundane - even boring or offensive - to the passerby can in fact be the decisive visual markers that connote sacred qualities. Ultimate, then, can best be described as an individual feeling, seemingly originating from outside of the individual. William James proposed that religion was, "the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine."
[13] James' definition of religion is analogous to a proper understanding of ultimate.
If feelings can be considered along a progressive line, with the most basic and utilitarian feelings (e.g. hunger, thirst, fatigue) on one side and the most complex and multifarious on the opposite (e.g., love, depression, a divine presence), then ultimate is at the end furthermost from the most nascent and straightforward feelings. Ultimate is a feeling that, when measured, is self-sustaining, invigorating, endearing, inexhaustible, powerful, and re-affirming. "Sacred places give human beings a sense of power that comes from participating in something greater than individual existence," Jon
Pahl reminds us.
[14] Thus, ultimate is the seemingly transcendent character of the feeling coming from any experience in any given space.
The process of sacrilization changes over time. Sacred space is not a monolith: it has and will evolve. This is to say that cultures vary from time to time and from place to place, so perceptions of the ultimate as experienced in a sacred space must change as well. Sociologist Robert Bellah has suggested that evolution essentially is:
A process of increasing differentiation and complexity of organization which endows the organism, social system, or whatever the unit in question may be, with greater capacities to adapt to its environment.
[15]“Against all the efforts of religious actors, sacred space is inevitably entangled with the entrepreneurial, the social, the political, and other ‘profane’ forces,”
[16] declares religious scholars
Chidester and
Linenthal.
Megachurches, by their leader's own admissions, confirm this assumption. Similarly, Jon
Pahl has claimed, "A sacred place may lose or gain its status from one generation to the next."
[17] Richard
Vosko, a Roman Catholic priest and worship design consultant, says one way in which buildings become sacred over time is analogous to the way in which bronze and copper acquire patina as they age.
[18]
The reality of
Bellah's evolution means that while there have always been and always will be sacred places, no archetype has ever existed to define a sacred space in every epoch. Consequently, there is no set checklist to determine if a space is truly sacred. An
individual's experience, one that takes them towards the end of their feelings where they can associate the space with their perception of the ultimate is what makes any given place sacred. And
megachurch attendees, though they do verbally not give such credence to the space itself, continue to report experiences of major transformations, euphoric feelings, and even the "presence of God," which are, of course, ultimate feelings.
[19] Thus, the perception of the sacred has always been rooted in a positive personal experience and association with the ultimate.
Sacred space, at is nucleus, is fundamentally a category of anthropology assigned to spaces by meaning-making humans based on how they perceive the path to the ultimate in any give space at any given moment. Any study of modern sacred space that does not recognize the human ability to construct sacred spaces is fundamentally flawed.
[20]As Rowland A.
Sherrill has noted, “The designation of a spot in the landscape or
culturescape as ‘sacred’ results from human decision-making, a result flowing from perceptions of the special, spiritual meanings associated with the site.”
[21] Providing this perspective is an
indispensible lens in appraising the sacred elements of the Protestant
megachurch. Moreover,
Sherrill has cogently stated:
No space or place is intrinsically sacred, that the
sacrality of a place, sensible or symbolic, is a function of human recognition or attribution, that the sense of the sacred is always implicated in local forms of culturally conditioned sense-making.
[22]Cultural conditioning, then, is best understood as the culture in which any space comes into being. Modern spaces do not emerge from thin air; they are created (i.e., "conditioned") and promulgated within any given culture. Some historians have gone so far to suggest that buildings, more than anything else, are first and foremost, "emblem[s] of a culture."
[23][1] Eliade's work was first published in French in 1957. The English translation was published in 1959.
[2] Eliade,
Mircea. The Sacred And The Profane. New York: Harcourt, Inc., 1957, p. 64.
[3] Clayton, Elizabeth, "A Tale of Two Cemeteries." Undergraduate Thesis,
Samford University, 2009, p. 4.
[4] Eliade, M., The Sacred And The Profane, p. 64.
[5] Chidester, David E and
Linenthal, Edward T., eds. American Sacred Space.
Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1995, p. 17.
[6] Chidester &
Linenthal, p. 15.
[7] Clayton, Elizabeth, "A Tale of Two Cemeteries," p.7.
[8] Nelson, Louis P., ed. American Sanctuary: Understanding Sacred Places.
Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2006, p. 10.
[9] White, James F. Christian Worship in North America: A
Retrospective 1955-1995. Eugene, Ore.:
Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2007, p. 211.
[10] Tuan,
Yi-
Fu. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977.
p. 114.
[11] DeMott, Nancy, Tim Shapiro, and Brent Bill. Holy Places: Matching Sacred Space with Mission and Message.
Herndon, Va.: The
Alban Institute, 2007, p.14.
[12] Pahl, Jon. Shopping Malls and Other Sacred Spaces: Putting God in Place. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Brazos Press, 2003, p. 265.
[13] James, William . "The Varieties of Religious Experience." In Introducing Religion: Readings From the Classic Theorists, Daniel L. Pals, New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
[14] Pahl, J., Shopping Malls and Other Sacred Spaces, p. 265.
[15] Robert N.
Bellah, "Religious Evolution," American.
Sociological Review, vol. 29, 1964, p. 358.
[16] Chidester and
Linenthal, American Sacred Space, p. 17.
[17] Pahl, J., Shopping Malls and Other Sacred Spaces, p. 265.
[18] Vosko, Richard. God's House Is Our House: Re-Imaging the Environment for Worship. Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2006, p. 49.
[19] It should be mentioned that many megachurch attendees do not give such power to the space itself. They would be quick to point out it is the relevant preaching, teaching, and fellowship that ushers in this "presence." The astute theorist, however, must bracket these retorts and recognize that space governs these meaningful encounters. Loveland and Wheeler, From Meetinghouse to Megachurch, p. 240.
[20] Chidester & Linenthal, American Sacred Space, p. 19.
[21] Sherrill in Chidester & Linenthal, American Sacred Space, p. 313.
[22] Sherrill in Chidester and Linenthal, American Sacred Space, p. 319.
[23] Vosko, R., God's House is Our House, p. 52.
