scholarly journals The Politics, Poetics and Performance of Sacred Space: The Sacred Space of Cook Islands Christian Churches

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Maria Kecskemeti
Keyword(s):  
Sacred Space ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Cook Islands ◽  
Christian Churches ◽  
Spatial Production ◽  
Sacred And Profane ◽  
Politics Of Space ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Related Process

<p>The current literature about sacred space suggests that it is produced through either substantive definitions of space (the poetics of space) or situational definitions of space (the politics of space). I conducted ethnographic research in the Cook Islands to consider how these two constructions of space interact to produce the sacred space of the Cook Islands Christian Church. I have shown that the production of sacred space can be described through three modes of spatial production: the politics of space, the poetics of space and the performance of space. They are enacted through social practices in an inter-related process. Based on these findings I propose a spatial triad model. I suggest that by moving beyond traditional dichotomous constructions of space such a spatial triad model can contribute to new understandings of how sacred and profane space is produced and reproduced.</p>

scholarly journals The Politics, Poetics and Performance of Sacred Space: The Sacred Space of Cook Islands Christian Churches

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Maria Kecskemeti
Keyword(s):  
Sacred Space ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Cook Islands ◽  
Christian Churches ◽  
Spatial Production ◽  
Sacred And Profane ◽  
Politics Of Space ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Related Process

<p>The current literature about sacred space suggests that it is produced through either substantive definitions of space (the poetics of space) or situational definitions of space (the politics of space). I conducted ethnographic research in the Cook Islands to consider how these two constructions of space interact to produce the sacred space of the Cook Islands Christian Church. I have shown that the production of sacred space can be described through three modes of spatial production: the politics of space, the poetics of space and the performance of space. They are enacted through social practices in an inter-related process. Based on these findings I propose a spatial triad model. I suggest that by moving beyond traditional dichotomous constructions of space such a spatial triad model can contribute to new understandings of how sacred and profane space is produced and reproduced.</p>

Risking Everything: Political Theatre for Mass Audiences in Rural Germany

1999 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-122
Author(s):  
Alison M. Phipps
Keyword(s):  
Job Creation ◽  
Language Education ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Political Theatre ◽  
Intercultural Studies ◽  
Annual Basis ◽  
South West ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Performance Research

In the south-west German village of Hayingen, the playwright-director Martin Schleker presents large open-air productions of politically sensitive yet entertaining plays to mass audiences on an annual basis. This article explores the element of risk in Schleker's work: his use of purely amateur performers; his job-creation schemes for young people; and his left-wing and often anti-Catholic stance on issues such as racism and nuclear arms before often deeply conservative, culturally Catholic audiences. Schleker's work is situated in the wider context of the state-funded, civic theatres in Germany, and of the tradition of open-air ‘Naturtheater’ which is particularly strong in the Swabian region. Some assumptions surrounding such binary divides as amateur-professional and high art-entertainment are also explored. Data for this article was collected in the Hayingen ‘Naturtheater’ during a period of ethnographic research supported by the Leverhulme Trust. Having completed her doctorate at Sheffield University, Alison Phipps has been working as a lecturer in the Department of German – and in particular in the Centre for Intercultural Germanistics – at Glasgow University since October 1995. She has published in the areas of her research interests, which include contemporary German theatre and performance research, Ethnographic approaches to language education, and popular German culture and intercultural studies.

scholarly journals Producing Sacred Space in Secular Kitchens: South Asian Immigrant Women’s Hindu Shrines in American Domestic Architecture

2021 ◽  
Vol 90-91 ◽  
pp. 24-42
Author(s):  
Puja Sahney
Keyword(s):  
Sacred Space ◽  
Vernacular Architecture ◽  
Domestic Architecture ◽  
Asian Immigrant ◽  
Architectural Analysis ◽  
Spatial Production ◽  
Inclusive Approach ◽  
Worship Practices ◽  
Fluid Process ◽  
Permanent Residents

This paper demonstrates the processes of spatial production achieved through the setup of a home shrine by newly arrived Hindu immigrant women inside American houses, particularly the kitchens.  By focusing on the home shrine, the paper uses a gendered lens through which to understand vernacular architecture, since women often garner greater control over domestic objects and interiors than they do over construction of buildings. I propose that production of sacred space, achieved through domestic objects like home shrines, is a fluid process. Its location in the house can be more easily changed from one place to another. Compared to the permanent construction of buildings, this compliancy of form may appear less concrete for providing objective architectural analysis. However, I suggest that it is the opposite. The flexibility involved in women’s production process makes room for greater spatial negotiation and demonstrates the diversity of ways concrete domestic architecture is maneuvered to satisfy women’s religious needs over time. Further, the paper demonstrates the wide array of complex decisions that women have to make regarding body movements in the house and worship practices, achieved through material intervention, that speak of domestic architecture in less static and more dynamic ways. By tracing women’s experiences with domestic architecture as new arrivals in the country, and later, as permanent residents, the paper foregrounds women’s strong architectural contributions through the use of domestic objects that enable a gendered and consequently a more inclusive approach to the study of architectural space.

Christianity and the Classics

1944 ◽  
Vol 13 (37) ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
W. B. Stanford
Keyword(s):  
Christian Schools ◽  
Classical Rhetoric ◽  
Historical Survey ◽  
Alexander The Great ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Classical Education ◽  
Christian Churches ◽  
Christian Literature ◽  
The Church

‘What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?’ cries Tertullian of Carthage when the Christian Church was barely two centuries old, ‘what harmony is there between Plato's Academy and the Church?’ Then, with all the mastery of eloquence that he had learned in the school of classical rhetoric, he denounces non-Christian literature as pernicious—‘We have no need of curiosity going beyond Christ Jesus, nor of inquiry beyond the Gospel.’The question might still be crudely asked to-day—Why teach pagan literature in Christian countries and Christian schools? Some may answer that the problem and the conflict are past; none of the greater Christian churches opposes classical education now; on the contrary the clergy mostly encourage it, while it is the scientists that object. But Christianity and the classics meet each other with different facets in different epochs. Sometimes these facets seem less adjustable than those before them. And some of the defences made for pre-Christian literature by Christians, and some of the uses they recommend for it, deserve attention still.What follows here is mainly an historical survey, and necessarily a very sketchy one. It must begin long before our Lord's time, at the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C. By that time Palestine and Egypt, the two great centres of Judaism, had come under Greek rule. After Alexander's death both these regions were taken over by Ptolemy. He and his namesake successors were enlightened and tolerant monarchs. Under their rule Hellenism gained ground among the Jews both at Jerusalem and at Alexandria.

Sacred and profane: Pastoral care in the parish church

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Varnam
Keyword(s):  
Pastoral Care ◽  
Sacred Space ◽  
Symbiotic Relationship ◽  
Wall Paintings ◽  
Sacred Spaces ◽  
Parish Church ◽  
Sacred And Profane ◽  
Church Art ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

This chapter argues that the profane challenge posed by lay misbehaviour and sacrilege in the church paradoxically strengthens sacred space. Sermon exempla from the literature of pastoral care (e.g. Mirk’s Festial, Mannyng’s Handlyng Synne) show how devils and demons assist in the cleansing of the church from profane contamination and the chapter argues for the integral relationship between violence and the sacred, focusing on the punishment of sinners and on the sacrificial blood of Christ, depicted in lyrics and wall paintings. The chapter reassesses the relationship between church art and sermon exempla and argues for a symbiotic relationship that presents the material church and its devotional objects as living, breathing actors in the drama of salvation. The performance of narrative exempla animates the visual depictions of angels, devils, and saints in the church who come to life to protect and fight for their sacred spaces.

scholarly journals Sporting Space, Sacred Space: A Theology of Sporting Place

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 473
Author(s):  
Robert Ellis
Keyword(s):  
Sacred Space ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Ordinary Space ◽  
Religious Significance ◽  
Sacred And Profane ◽  
Special Places ◽  
Theological Understanding ◽  
The Way

Religion often designates locations that are considered sacred, marked off from ordinary space. Sporting venues also take on a significance for players and supporters that is seldom adequately explained in solely sporting terms. Can theological understandings of place illuminate the way in which players and spectators relate to the ‘sacred space’ of their sporting endeavors? In this paper, I explore and assess the theological and religious significance of sporting space by reflecting upon descriptions of both religious and sporting special places. I use a range of types of descriptions of experiences of such spaces together with theological ideas and concepts, including Christian notions of incarnation, sacrament, and Trinity, which are found to be useful resources, undermining a strict binary of ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’ space. I then build upon previous theological and empirical work with sports participants to explore a theological understanding of special sporting places and the experiences of those who play and support sporting endeavors in them.

Maronite Music: History, Transmission, and Performance Practice

2010 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 196-215 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guilnard Moufarrej
Keyword(s):  
Performance Practice ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
New World ◽  
Music History ◽  
Political Freedom ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Religious Music ◽  
Geographic Boundaries ◽  
And Performance

This essay discusses the music of the Maronite Church, a Christian church based in Lebanon. It provides an overview of the chants used in religious services and examines their transmission and performance practice. The Maronites have always faced challenges to maintain their identity and preserve their heritage while adapting to their cultural milieu. Their religious music reflects the dichotomy between safeguarding tradition and accepting contemporary trends. Since the late nineteenth century, Maronites looking for better opportunities and political freedom have increasingly immigrated to the New World, where they face new challenges to preserving their religious identity while assimilating to the culture of their new homeland. Therefore, this essay reaches beyond the traditional geographic boundaries of the Maronite Church in Lebanon to examine issues in the transmission of Maronite music in the diaspora.

The Somatics of Syncretism: Tying Body and Soul in Haitian Religion

2010 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 379-403 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terry Rey ◽  
Karen Richman
Keyword(s):  
African Diaspora ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
African Religion ◽  
Body And Soul ◽  
Religious Syncretism ◽  
National Boundaries ◽  
And Performance

The convergence of African religion and Christianity in the Atlantic world has inspired some of the most significant and most analyzed examples of syncretism in the study of religion. Scholarly discussions of these phenomena, however, tend to portray religions like Vodou in Haiti and Candomblé in Brazil as mergers of various Euro-Christian and ‘‘traditional’’ African elements that chiefly result from processes of cognitive ideation, thereby blurring the integrative somatic dimensions of religious syncretism. Modes of embodying knowledge, power, and morality are thus largely absent from the discussion of religious syncretism in Haitian Vodou and Catholicism, as well as other contact-cultural religions, whose congregational and performance spaces now span national boundaries. Drawing upon the historiography of Kongolese and Haitian religion, and on our multi-site ethnographic research among religious communities in Haiti, to think about religious syncretism in the African diaspora, this paper focuses on two key metaphors of mimetic knowledge and embodiment, mare and pwen (tying and point), arguing that they are both fundamental processes in Haitian religious syncretism and essential tropes for understanding Haitian Vodou and Catholicism, processes that are of predominantly Central African, and especially Kongolese, origin.

scholarly journals Fra huskult til basilika

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Per Bilde
Keyword(s):  
Lecture Hall ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Churches ◽  
Dwelling House ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Church Building ◽  
History Of ◽  
Dining Room

It is still an astonishing fact that no material remains of early Christian churches have been found antedating the building in Dura-Europos at the Euphrat River in present day Iraq. It was a usual private dwelling house that in 241 was rebuilt and transformed into a Christian cult place. This building, however, in no way resembled the magnificent Christian basilicas that were built from the time of Constantine the Great (ruling 306/324-337), and only the baptistery in the rebuilt houses proves that it actually was a Christian building. In the present article I briefly scetch the history of the development of the Christian cult building from the private meeting places at the time of the New Testament to the Constantinian basilicas. The main purpose, however, is to discuss the character of the Christian cult house in relation to a number of related earlier and contemporary types of buildings such as the classical Hellenistic-Roman temples, the Jewish synagogue and a number of Graeco-Roman buildings that can be reagrded as historical forerunners of the Christian church building: the Greek counsel hall (bouleutêrion), the hall of initiation (e.g. Eleusis), the lecture hall (such as gymnasium and stoa), the Greek and Near Eastern cult theatres, the roman basilica and the Roman mithraeum. From the beginning, obviously, the Christian cult building  was a meeting house like the Greek counsel hall, the roman basilica and the Jewish synagogue. But it was also a dining room, and, at least from 241, with thebatistery in Dura-Europos, it also became a hall of initiation. Thus, the Christian cult building developed by uniting a number of eatlier types of buildings, secular and sacred, and from the time of Constantine, the Christian basilica united the secular Greek meeting house, which was continued and further developed in the Jewish synagogue, the Greek hall of initiation, and the classical Graeco-Roman Temple.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document