What makes a
place sacred? How do we define these holy spots, these epicenters
of belief?
Most of these buildings occupy a central place in a neighborhood,
town, or city. We have no trouble recognizing a church, a
synagogue, a temple, or a mosque. From the greatest to the most
humble, houses of worship have certain physical characteristics
that appeal to all of our senses, to our hearts as well as to our
heads. Outside, their materials are often precious and placed with
care, covered with carvings having symbolic and allegorical value.
Through their architecture and decoration they tell us stories.
These buildings are “books” that can be “read,”
recounting the articles of faith. Beautiful stained glass windows
can lift us from our earthly concerns and raise our spirits to an
ethereal realm. We trace our fingers along stone, tile,
wrought-iron, and carved wood to grasp their permanence with our
fingertips.
Large expanses of space are often found inside these holy
buildings. Vast interiors not only accommodate those who come to
pray, but are symbolically big enough for God to join us. A soft
glow falls from above, filters through the sanctuary, and occupies
the space with us. Shafts of sunlight spill from upper windows to
the cool stone floors below, like ladders to the heavens. The sound
of footsteps, whispered prayers, and hymns echo within these sacred
chambers, amplifying our presence before the divine. Flickering
candles of beeswax and trails of incense fill our noses with
uncommon scents from another time and place.
This is what our religious buildings are made of—a tally of
their physical reality. But what is the magic ingredient that makes
these places sacred, that sets them apart as realms between heaven
and earth?
The magic ingredient
The answer, I believe, is that these places become sacred only
through us, through our presence, as settings for our lives’
most spiritual, challenging times. One manifestation is wear. There
is a wonderful, famous photograph of the interior of Wells
Cathedral in England, taken by Frederick Evans in 1900. I believe
it captures a dimension of the sacred in its river of stairs, which
shows the cumulative wear of pilgrims through the centuries. When
we tread across these worn stones, we follow the path of believers
before us. The groove they’ve made is a channel through which
flows a community of faith, a family of believers that we connect
to through this building. The sacred place reveals the
substantiation of faith.
Another example is the foot of the statue of St. Peter in St.
Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, which has literally been worn
away over hundreds of years as pilgrims have touched the effigy of
Catholicism’s first pope. When you touch the foot, you take a
few molecules of bronze with you, but you also leave behind a bit
of yourself, joining the millions of others who have visited this
sacred place.
Sense of community
But a sacred place is more than just worn steps. It is a place that
takes on the patina of life and faith. This is why even secular
places can be sacred. One thinks of the Gettysburg cemetery where
rest—as Lincoln said during its dedication—those who
“gave the last full measure of devotion.” Gettysburg is
sacred because of the people who died there, and what they died
for, in the same way that many people now see the World Trade
Center site as sacred.
Preserving sacred places is important because it not only secures
older buildings of fine design and craftsmanship. It also preserves
the evidence of tradition and the history of belief—signs that
we are part of something mysterious and much larger than
ourselves.
Michael J. Crosbie, PhD, RA, is the editor-in-chief of Faith
& Form: Journal of Religion Art and Architecture
(www.faithandform.com) and author of several books on religious
architecture