Daniel Thompson: Landscapes of the Sacred Blog 1

Lane does a great job explaining how a sacred place comes to be. He shows how culture, religion, and geography all play a role in determining a sacred place. I noticed this mostly agreed with the axiom that a sacred place chooses itself. At first I thought the book was disagreeing with this axium since culture is a human controlled aspect of defining a sacred place. However, I realized that since culture is a result of the collective and not the individual, that a sacred place does indeed chose itself at least from a cultural perspective. However, when concerning religion I was less convinced Lane's view agreed with the axiom. Many sacred places are simply churches commissioned by priests or the Pope himself. And in many of these places the church location isn't anything significant and there doesn't appear to be any reason for its particular location. In other words the religious influence over a sacred place seemed too human controlled from my perspective. Why are many churches considered sacred places even though the location and geography weren't significant? Can those places even be called sacred or just religious?

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