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This article was originally published on Common Edge.
In the post-pandemic era, an oversupply of underutilized churches is a growing reality. Besides offering explorations in adaptive reuse, what does this trend say about modern spirituality? Have humans lost interest in the sacred? In a recent article on Common Edge, Duo Dickinson addressed this concern by claiming that “the cultural change that is causing the abandonment of churches does not end the human search for the sacred.”
While correctly stating that no formula can turn architecture into “the holy,” he seemed to indicate that a new spirituality might still be found in architectural form. As we consider what changing forms of sacred space mean for the modern era, looking for a revitalization of spirituality through architecture alone risks a repeat of an error made in the last century: expecting too much of aesthetics.
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Twentieth century architecture grappled with the longstanding problem of defining meaning by attempting to sidestep the problem through abstraction. While dissolving the literal connection between what art is and what it represents helps to open new modes of artistic exploration, in the realm of the sacred, at least, the detachment of form from the mechanics of lived experience risks the larger problem of irrelevance.
This was starkly illustrated recently when I walked through an art museum with a group of intelligent, educated people from different countries who, upon moving from early 19th century art and architecture into a modern wing with what I found to be stunning abstract art, visibly recoiled and expressed that the art made them feel “stupid.” It’s a common experience for me to feel a greater connection to abstract art and space than others around me since as an architect I am educated in the language of abstraction. Still, I find the response of inaccessibility common and widespread. If traditional forms of sacred space are waning in relevance, reducing them to just aesthetic objects robs them of their place at the center of human experience. Spiritual meaning cannot exist in the abstract but must maintain a connection to the life experience from which it sprang. Perception of abstract form might be the language of modern sacred architecture, but it can’t be the content.
A recent project of mine examined the connection between form and content in sacred space. Called “Sanctuary,” it took one step away from the world of architecture into something between art and full-scale model-building, in order to isolate the interplay between aesthetics and spiritual experience. We designated a sidewalk at the Utah Pride Festival as a location to build a sacred space from the ground up. This context was provocative, as many in local religious circles would consider the Pride Festival itself “profane.” The structure was built with inexpensive materials: cardboard and translucent colored panels (a waste product from a local manufacturer), a far cry from tradition in Salt Lake City, where honed granite is the language of the sacred.
Using parametric modeling, I designed a structure that could be laser cut from flat sheets of cardboard and assembled with friends and volunteers, a construction of cardboard vaults, pushing the structural limits of the material and creating plays of light and layering that was both unfamiliar and reminiscent of historical sacred space: stained-glass windows and the arch-based forms of ancient architecture. The design positioned the project between tradition and innovation, always with a tension between the awe of grandeur and the material’s natural fragility. Still, the reinvented forms and nontraditional materials alone lacked an essential element to reach beyond aesthetics into the sacred.
The critical piece that fell outside of our control was the participation of the festival attendees.Visitors were told this was intended to be a safe space of equality and mutual validation and were asked to share their personal experience by ornamenting the structure with their own words or images. They would walk through the structure, experiencing the spatial and lighting effects and focusing their attention on their own inner experiences and those shared by others. Being hosted by the Pride Festival, shared comments focused on experiences of feeling ostracized and the associated discovery of self worth common in the LGBTQ+ experience. Being invited to bare their inner feelings created a sense of common vulnerability and common understanding. Some cried, some took pictures, and some connected with strangers, while others laughed or internalized as the project took on an identity of its own. In this context, a safe space for sharing personal experience, a physical structure creating beauty out of waste, became a metaphorical reflection of marginalized individuals building a community by sharing meaningful experiences and witnessing those of others.
This experiment points to a critical component of sacred space as it is contemplated in our currently changing culture. Humans are not losing spirituality, if spirituality is understood as the search to process human experience, to come together, to search for meaning in spite of the human condition. These are innate responses to being alive. If religions are losing their hold on giving expression to spirituality, humans’ needs are not diminishing. If sacred forms are losing the magic of spiritual connection, it is the forms of modern religion that should be questioned, not the human condition.
In this light, it becomes clear that supplanting traditional forms of sacred space with architecture focused solely on aesthetics fails to fill the human need that calls for sacred space in the first place. The key to finding a new relevance for sacred space lies in architectural humility. Sacred space should not attempt to supplant spirituality, but to respectfully host and magnify something that is beyond its ability to create. It must respect the experience of its users, not impose orders of abstraction or tradition that leave them confused or disinterested. New practices and new sacred spaces must evolve together because spirituality does not start or end with religion, or architecture, but is a fundamental human experience larger than the places that host it.
In the final phase of the Sanctuary’s three-stop tour from Salt Lake to Idaho to New York, I had the experience of installing a portion of the cardboard structure in a historical church in New York City. The pastor, Will Critzman—who had sponsored its installation and is himself an innovator in spiritual community as the first openly queer minister of the Collegiate Church of New York City—stood one Sunday morning with the piece as his backdrop and spoke of the persistent human need for “sanctuary,” and of the sculpture as a metaphor for something unwaveringly human, of a need that would never disappear but would need to be reinvented in new forms. It felt like the project, defying its identity as trash, had connected with something essential about the relationship between space and spiritual experience.
In an essay from his book Transcending Architecture, Father Kevin Seasoltz suggested that the only way to belong to a community, church, or civilization is “to help build it.” In the face of a growing inventory of unused churches and what that says about humanity, one might repeat his question: “Are we going to be part of a new humanity, or shall we be found cultural runaways once more, one revolution behind?”
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