Central to the work of many religious communities is the creation of sacred space. From majestic stained-glass covered medieval Cathedrals to intimate living room ofrendas adorned with the images and the favorite foods of loved ones, the spaces that Christians construct to serve as sites of ecclesial practice are powerful symbols that embody the unique identities and values of those communities. So much so that the work of making spaces sacred can itself be considered a constitutive ecclesial practice. These papers employ qualitative research as a resource for reflection on the theological significance of the work that church communities do to build, cultivate, transform, and/or designate spaces as sites of sacred encounter. This panel focuses on sacred space in the context of migration. Panelists investigate the creation of sacred space as a justice-oriented ecclesial practice.
Residents of Douglas, Arizona, gather once a week near the border wall for the Sanando Nuestras Fronteras (Healing our Borders) vigil to remember people who have died while crossing through the desert into the United States. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the organizers transformed the vigil into a hybrid event, which has continued in order to accommodate participants who had not been able to join the vigil in the past due to constraints related to geographic limitations, health concerns, and accessibility issues. This paper discusses the transformation of the vigil into a translocal liturgical event. For virtual participants, the weekly vigil has invited the presence of the dead into my homes across the continent. The violence of the border has become part of their domestic life. With the vigil as a hybrid event, the border has migrated into domestic life, thus trespassing across the line between public and private spheres.
This paper explores the dynamic process of identity formation that is facilitated when the New Sanctuary Movement (NSM) demarcates a space as “sanctuary.” Drawing on participant observation and interviews with members of a NSM congregation that hosted a family in sanctuary, the paper discusses experiences of identity transformation that were initiated when the church became a physical manifestation of the power contest between church and state. These observations are considered in conversation with social scientific research on sanctuary practices and with theological reflections on ecclesiology and political theology that are generated by the church’s resistance to the state.
In conversation with practical theology and ordinary ethics, this paper explores the nature of sacred space-making at Lattice Ministries. A former church turned community hub, Lattice Ministries’ campus hosts myriad groups that accompany those who first came to the U.S. seeking refuge. Drawing on interview and participant observation data, I argue that the community of Lattice Ministries makes space sacred through practices of just neighboring. Just neighboring practices like convening meetings and enabling play are both ordinary and justice oriented. By molding the Lattice Ministries campus into a place where people routinely practice recognizing the Divine in all their neighbors, just neighboring practices deepen and expand the sacredness of the space. Attending to the work of sacred space-making at Lattice Ministries challenges scholars to grapple with the ways sacredness might not only linger but be made more capacious following a congregation’s closure and offers resources to faith communities experiencing decline.