Shopping Malls and Other Sacred Spaces

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Christian historian Sidney Mead has observed: "In America space has played the part that time has played in older cultures of the world." In Shopping Malls and Other Sacred Spaces, Jon Pahl examines this provocative statement in conversation with what he calls the "spatial character" of American theology. He argues that places are always imaginatively constructed by the human beings who inhabit them. Sometimes this spatial theology works to our benefit, other times it poses spiritual risks. What happens when our banal "clothing of the sacred" violates our genuine need for comfort and intimacy? Or when we remember that the fleeting pleasures of a shopping trip or a Disneyland escape are designed to fill someone else's pocket rather than the spiritual emptiness in our own hearts? Pahl develops several ways to "clothe the divine from within the Christian tradition." He introduces a theology of place that reveals aspects of God's character through biblical metaphors drawn from physical spaces, such as the true vine, the rock, and the living water. Accessible and thought provoking, this enlightening book provides a better grasp of our particularly American way of lending religious significance to spaces of all kinds. "Well worth reading. . . . As many commentators have noted, American civil religion has become, over the last half-century or so, a do-it-yourself phenomenon as the focus of people's ultimate concern has migrated from congregations gathered on the Sabbath toward places like football stadiums, movie houses, and, as Jon Pahl documents, the shopping mall, the theme park, and the proverbial home in the suburbs. . . . At the heart of this project is what he describes in one salient sentence as 'a justification by grace through the ordinary gifts of place.'" --Charles Henderson, executive director, ARIL/CrossCurrents "An honest, challenging look at America's real religion." --Rebecca Alpert, Temple University Jon Pahl teaches theology and is an associate professor of American religious history at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.