Eleventh International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

Religious communities and institutions often talk about “the sacred” as something eternal and transcendent. Religion itself – the content, values, and teachings of particular traditions – are often taken to be eternally unchanging yet religions are practiced by people, and people exist in history. People come to know and communicate their religious experiences, values, and identities through cultural forms that are historical. This reality is as true for religious architecture as it is for music texts or ritual activities that are beatified into religions cannon. Innovation and creativity within religious traditions highlight the historical nature of religious practices and, at the same time, provide a window into how religious actors negotiate the relationship between the temporal and humanly-created connecting their claims of transcendent and eternal truths. This paper examines how religious actors have approached the intersection between human innovation and claims of transcendent truth, particularly in relation to architecture and the production of sacred place. Potential distinctions between different religious traditions and the meaning of “sacred space” and religious architecture are revealed.