Sacred Space

    When we think back to all the sacred places we have all been in our lives, many of us share the same thoughts. Some may say a church was sacred to them, while others have had different experiences in other locations. In The Sacred and The Profane by Mircea Eliade, he speaks about the difference between sacred and ordinary places. Eliade believes that the easiest way to differentiate between these two ideas is to think about a church and a street in a busy city. You walk by the street every day with no real significance. There is no significance to a typical street, which makes it ordinary. However, the church that sits next to the street is sacred. It is a temple of worship for all who believe. Eliade also plants the idea that church doors are a portal between two worlds, the sacred and the profane. The doors of a church act as what he states as being “the Paradoxical place where [the] two worlds communicate.” This idea helps bring me to my main point: according to Eliade, virtually anyone can create sacred spaces. A place becomes religious because you perceive it as such. For someone devoted to religion, their place of worship is of the utmost holiness. However, on the other side, someone not of that religion finds no sacredness in that building. To them, a church could be just a building. Sacred spaces pop up all around us whether we see them or not. Jerusalem is a prime example of a shared space with many different beliefs and ideologies all mixed together. Jerusalem has something that most cities do not; it is one of if not the most holy places to multiple religions. While Jerusalem is just one city, a host of religions have all established sacred spaces amongst each other. According to a New York Times article, there are many sites within the city’s walls where two religions find the site holy. These differences show just how a site can be seen as sacred while that exact place is ordinary to someone outside of that belief system. Eliade provides such a unique stance on this topic that I would not have thought about it if I had not read his work. The sacred and the profane, indeed, are two worlds that, while totally different, are closer than they seem.

Citations:

New York Times article

https://www.nytimes.com/1964/01/04/archives/3-religions-hold-jerusalem-holy-sites-are-shared-by-jews-christians.html

The Sacred and The Profane

https://canvas.trinity.edu/courses/3804/pages/schedule-of-readings-and-assignments