While sacred spaces are centers for religious gatherings and worship, they also are the setting for numerous other activities. A space’s sacredness may evolve over time, or external factors may require the rethinking and reinvention of the space. The Versatility of Sacred Spaces looks at the multitude of purposes within a sacred space as well as how these spaces are transformed by events or over time in unexpected ways.

Sacred spaces serve a wider variety of purposes than most people expect. “The Multiplicity of Cemeteries” paper will explore the different ways in which an inherently sacred space can be used. Cemeteries, for example, are known for their burial rituals and as a space of mourning, however, they often serve a variety of functions such as places of recreation and education. This versatility makes cemeteries a place where a diverse spectrum of activities can take place.

Along with recreation and education, the versatility of these types of spaces is further explored at a community-level in “The Versatility of Assistens Cemetery in Denmark”.  Considering the unique historical and cultural traditions of Denmark, the author briefly delves into the formation of this space and how it has contributed to its modern usage.  The multiplicity of the space is considered with the author’s personal experience as well as snippets from other visitors to better understand the space.  Through this process Assistens is used as a model to demonstrate how versatility and functionality can exist while still maintaining a space’s inherent sanctity.

The question of what to do with the inherent sanctity of a church in the wake of violence is at the heart of “Mass Shootings in American Sacred Spaces”. The ways communities come together and what happens to a place of worship after a mass shooting is examined with a focus on four different churches across four states. The way these churches address a mass shooting within their sacred space ranges from replacement to commemoration, and from keeping the doors open to closing them, sometimes permanently.

Sacred spaces worldwide are closing their doors due to the decrease of affiliation with religion.  The “Sacred Spaces Reimaged” section will look at how people are preserving these powerful buildings in ways that benefit everyone, regardless of religious affiliation.  This section will focus on three examples of abandoned churches within the United States of America and the Netherlands.  It will examine the places that started as strictly Christian churches and have transformed into spaces that allow people to better themselves in ways that are not traditionally spiritual but in ways that are both intangible and tangible.

Sacred spaces are a unique type of space that provide a setting for many activities and are meaningful to a variety of groups.  They change with society, affecting and being affected by the living. This blending of respect and reverence felt towards these spaces into the lives of those impacted is what gives them their meaning. When these spaces sacred to religious communities become settings of terrible violence, those communities are forced to make difficult decisions about how to use or reinterpret their space. Sacred spaces do not have to be traditional and interpretation of what makes a space sacred is personal. As these papers demonstrate, people can feel a connection to a higher power within a contemporary space.

The Multiplicity of Cemeteries

By Marissa Alessi

Sacred spaces are often thought of as places of specific use, their plasticity is rarely acknowledged. Cemeteries are increasingly multiplicitous spaces that can be used for a variety of purposes and can draw in diverse groups of people. The uses of a cemetery can be broken down into two categories: the sacred and the recreational. The sacred uses of cemeteries are the most obvious one. People go for private and personal activities like visiting loved ones, for religious reasons, or to find solitude and a moment to reflect on life (Rugg 2000). The recreational category can be further subdivided to activities identified as dark tourism or not. Dark tourism is the act of traveling to places that are associated to death or suffering and the sub-category Dark Resting Places “focuses upon the cemetery or grave markers as potential products for dark tourism” (Stone 2006, 154). This paper will look at the multiple uses of cemeteries and the different purposes people frequent them. The cemetery can be used for sacred uses or recreational uses, that include ghost hunting or ghost tours and visitors with historical interests in the sites. The sacred ways in which a cemetery can be used, and the sacred feelings it gives visitors, will be examined followed by the discussion of how cemeteries are used for ghost hunting and ghost tours in a non-sacred context, and historical interest in cemeteries will then be explained. A brief comparison of the three uses and the implications of a site such as a cemetery being used for a multiplicity of activities will be discussed.

A cemetery can be identified by three main characteristics; “an established perimeter, hedge or wall- dual purpose: protecting the dead from disturbance and increasingly in the 18th and 19th century sequestering the dead from the living” (Rugg, 2000, 262), and a symbolic or literal declaration of the meaning of the site. It is identified as a place that offers the opportunity and setting for memorializing an individual, and enshrines a person’s identity (Rugg, 2000).

Cemeteries are places of religious ritual, personal reflection, and remembrance. They are often places of sacred acts. The cemetery plays many roles in society that can be seen as sacred. “The cemetery is the appropriate sacred space where the living and the dead are separated and symbolically joined as one people through the performance of transition and memorial rites” (Francis 2003, 223). Cemeteries have the unique job of connecting the living with the dead. This connection helps give the cemetery the feeling of “otherness” that goes along with being sacred. The sacred purpose of the cemetery is to act as a “site where the living confront the reality of their own death and possibly receive comfort” (Francis 2003, 223). The rituals that take place in cemeteries also help give the site a sacred feeling and meaning. Rituals like the funeral “symbolically removes the individual from linear time and translates the profane person into the eternal sacred realm” (Francis 2003, 222). Cemeteries play important roles like these in providing places for people to connect to their religion and find comfort in the sacredness of the site.

Cemeteries can be very important places to certain religions, for example Catholic cemeteries play an important and sacred role in the religion and are highly symbolic. In the words of Friar Thomas Rosica “death is always a moment of religious significance, [it is] the culmination of our earthly pilgrimage and the passage to eternity. Catholic Cemeteries provide a bridge for that journey and are established to carry out the sacred religious function of the burial and care for the resting places of the deceased” (Friar 2008). Cemeteries are considered sacred spaces because they have the feeling of “otherness” that places set aside to be special and honored usually have. Friar Thomas Rosica describes them as “spiritual sites set aside for the interment of the faithful” (Friar 2008) and that “they are a testament to the belief, teachings and rich tradition of the Roman Catholic Church with regard to the deceased and the sacredness of the cemeteries in which their bodies rest” (Friar 2008). Cemeteries are places for connecting to faith and finding comfort in the beliefs of your faith and the afterlife.

People come to cemeteries to connect with those in their life who have passed away and to experience the holiness of a cemetery and its meanings. Cemeteries “proclaim through words, work and example the sacredness of the Human Body, the Belief in the Resurrection, and the Christian Virtue of Hope” (Friar 2008). Cemeteries can act as reminders of faith and offer a place to remember loved ones in a sacred way. To Catholics, cemeteries are “committed to encouraging Catholic prayer and devotion for our deceased brothers and sisters” and can be used for religious rituals like going to cemeteries to “pray and find peace and serenity in [the] reverent setting” (Friar 2008). People go to cemeteries for sacred activities or rituals but they are also drawn to these sites due to the emotions they elicit. Cemetery visits can take place for many reasons and can be very personal experiences for some people.

Cemeteries can be found all over, including on college campuses. Students from the University of Notre Dame reflect on their reasons for visiting cemeteries and the feeling they have during their visit. Speaking about Cedar Grove Cemetery, a cemetery described as “rich in history, long in tradition, and sacred by nature” one student describes the cemetery as a place “where one can get lost in the quiet and solitude of the memory of those who have gone before us” and how it can be a place for contemplation of “our own life and death, we place our hope in the saving power of Christ’s cross and resurrection” (University of Notre Dame, 2018). Cemeteries offer a place for people to connect to their religion and find that feeling of connection to a higher power. Another student relates that it “is also a place where God speaks indiscriminately (that is, to any who will listen) about absolute faithfulness shown to those who love and commit their lives to God. The cemetery is a testament to the power and beauty of vows” (University of Notre Dame, 2018). The students of Notre Dame describe the connection that they feel to their religion when visiting a cemetery. These reflections show how cemeteries represent something sacred in people’s lives and the important roles they play in religion. They can act as reminders of faith or even motivation to stay faithful and do right by their religion. One student spoke about his interactions with cemeteries by saying “I make the sign of the cross as I pass, asking the souls laid to rest there to pray for me that I might do my small part as a member of the Notre Dame family to honor their work and ministry… I even stop for a time and reflect on what these holy people gave” (University of Notre Dame, 2018). Cemeteries play an important and constant sacred role in the lives of people. They are places that are perceived as special or as a place of “otherness” due to their unique roles in religion.

Due to these feelings of otherness and sacredness, cemeteries are places that are respected and acknowledged as places of importance. Even though they are considered sacred sites cemeteries are mostly open to the public, but they keep their feel of sacredness and recive respect from most visitors. Some cemeteries are made official sacred sites and “although some cemeteries are opened after rituals that consecrate all or part of the site, cemeteries are for the most part considered sacred only in so far as the site is ‘regarded with respect’” (Rugg, 2000, 264). It is important that even non-religiously affiliated people who visit these places treat it as a sacred space in order to respect the people who do see it as sacred. Many cemeteries have rules to keep the atmosphere a sacred one, “much of this respect rests largely on the fact that the site acts as a context for grief, and it is the bereaved that need to be protected from inappropriate activity. Thus, behavior in cemeteries can be subject to a number of regulations, banning for example ball games or loud music” (Rugg, 2000, 264). Feelings of sacredness can be interrupted by other visitors to the cemetery, and the variety of uses of cemeteries may overlap and interrupt each other.

Cemeteries are often used for recreational use, and their aspect of death and uniqueness draw many types of people to their gates. Due to the uniqueness of cemeteries, the tourism industry has been increasingly drawn to them and other places of death. “Cemeteries have also become more than just places of veneration and commemoration” (Yuill, 2003, 61) and they have ventured towards being site of recreation and tourism. It has been shown that sites of deaths, disasters and atrocities are becoming an increasingly popular feature within the tourism landscape (Stone, 2006). People are often attracted to the unknown or the obscure and consequently often times drawn to cemeteries because of their unique contents. It is argued that people hold “a fascination with death, whether our own or others, through a combination of respect and reverence or morbid curiosity and superstition” (Stone 2006, 147) and this leads them to exploring cemeteries. People visit cemeteries for these reasons as opposed to sacred reasons previously discussed, one way of finding the experience they are looking for is through ghost hunting or ghost tours.

The feeling that people get from visiting cemeteries for recreational purposes are different from those who visit for sacred reasons. This difference can be seen in the experiences of ghost hunters. People are looking for a source of fun and for something exciting and out of the ordinary to happen, they start out their visit very differently than those who visit for sacred purposes. While on a ghost tour people have been described as having “palpable willingness and expectation to be enchanted – a simultaneous opening up to possibility and indeterminacy” (Holloway 2010, 626). The excitement and enchantment these people feel can easily be explained by the factor of the unknown and otherness found in cemeteries. This is because “enchantment occurs where we are simultaneously excited and made to feel uneasy as the world we know, the mundane world in which we live, is suspended and affects us in unforeseen ways. Enchantment is often a mix, on the one hand, of excitement, awe, and wonder and, on the other, of unease, dislocation, and unpredictability” (Holloway 2010, 625). These feelings have led cemeteries to take on a recreational aspect that can, at times, promote a more commercialized and entertainment based ethic (Stone 2006). There are many examples of cemeteries turned tourist site that have almost shed their sacred aspect into something completely different.

Cemeteries are most often thought of as “haunted”, and many people seek out the best places to experience this feeling. Some entire cities have tuned into the changing tourism game and have created hot spots for ghost hunting and “eerie” cemetery tours. New Orleans is famous for its cemeteries and people come from far and wide to visit them, commonly for unsacred pursuits. They have an entire website welcoming one to “get to know the most ghostly graveyards in New Orleans” and claim to be “America’s most haunted city” (Ghost Tours in New Orleans Cemeteries and Cathedrals 2018). The purpose of visiting cemeteries for ghost tours is very different than visiting for sacred reasons. The ghost tour website has descriptions of its’ tours and the features that draw people in. Tombs of famous people like Marie Laveau (a famous voodoo queen), along with people who were victims of the yellow fever, are advertised as sneak peaks into the tour (Ghost Tours in New Orleans Cemeteries and Cathedrals 2018). People go on these tours to see something that will spook them or to see something they find fascinating and exciting. These tours possibly give a sense of adventure to the people on them and provide an unusual experience. The website teases at all the notorious legends and “ghostly accounts” of people who are buried in the cemeteries (Ghost Tours in New Orleans Cemeteries and Cathedrals 2018). Visiting the cemeteries for ghost tours gives people a sense of excitement and fascination, nothing to do with the sacredness of the site. “Ghost walks tend to focus on the paranormal rather than on cases of sociopolitical turmoil and trepidation. These tours mix deep reflection with entertainment, fun, and education” (Gentry, 2007, 223). Although ghost hunting and sacred sentiments seem to be polar opposites, on some occasions, cemeteries can be used for both purposes.

Another famous cemetery known for its multiplicitous uses is the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles. This cemetery mixes the sacred and the recreational, it is the final resting place of celebrities and notable public figures, and has long served as a tourist attraction as well as a site of public memory (Levitt, 2012).  “Unique among dark tourism sites, Hollywood Forever brings together the gravity of death and a celebratory sense of remembrance” (Levitt, 2012, 20). It is a unique multi-purpose cemetery that holds sacred meaning to some but serves as a site of recreation and fun to others due to its famous inhabitants. The new owners of the cemetery have realized its opportunity to appeal to many uses, “tourists are encouraged to use the cemetery as social space, transforming relationships to the site” (Levitt, 2012, 20). The space can be used for more than just social events as well; it also serves the purpose of allowing people to find a personal moment or give them time for reflection. Something to point out is that not all visits to cemeteries are considered dark tourism, Levitt (2012) explains the situation well:

a visit to the cemetery can be contemplative as well, giving visitors the opportunity to consider their own mortality. Such moments of self-reflection may be uplifting rather than morose, as one may choose to leave the cemetery wishing to make the most of the time that remains. One may also find peace in cleaning the gravesite and spending time with the memories of a loved one. This is a deeply personal experience, different from the visit to a dark tourism site that marks the intersection of individual and cultural tragedy (21).

The two uses of cemeteries discussed so far have been about sacredness or entertainment, there is another aspect of cemeteries that does not fall under these two categories.

Cemeteries can be very useful in an educational sense as well as a personal or recreational experience. Historical interests in cemeteries have nothing to do with the fascination with death or the involvement in a religion, “visitors do not need to be directly affiliated with a death or disaster site or event to be attracted to it: some are simply interested in history” (Yuill, 2003, 59). These history buffs give cemeteries a different group of visitors compared to the others previously mentioned and show the multiplicity of cemeteries as being more than just sacred sites. Cemeteries provide great information to people who are interested in history, Francis (2003) describes the educational value of cemeteries:

“cemetery landscapes mirror the past life and historic eras through which the community has passed, and the size of plots, placement, type and size of headstones, inscriptions on markers, greater use of the American flag to decorate graves, disinterment and transfer to another burial ground all signal the significance of the cemetery as both a performance stage and a material artefact which reflects the social hierarchy of the community” (223).

The information that cemeteries contain make them important resources for researchers, educators, and general knowledge about a lace and the people that lived there. Due to their permanence as a landscape they collect data without even trying and “act as archives for social conditions, political climates, and environmental hardships”, and due to their nature of “being repositories of historical facts…[cemeteries are a] valuable source for investigating a broad range of subjects concerning the collective values and attitudes of generations past…they…provide important insights into views of death, the relationships between the living and the dead, religious beliefs, and gender and class distinctions” (Yuill, 2003, 61). Cemeteries are a useful tool for society to learn from the past and is just one other way in which they provide a multiplicity of uses to the public.

The multiple uses of a cemetery bring a variety of points of views into one place and can cause disagreements on the treatment of the space. People using the cemetery for religious reasons will want to keep the sacred feeling in the space that they came there for and may find the recreational uses to take away from their purpose. Many people who are there to experience the sacredness that can be found in a cemetery find “the use of the cemetery as social space disrespectful, maintaining the perspective that as a burial site, a cemetery is sacred space that should be respected, while others embrace a shifting attitude toward death as a fundamental part of life that should be neither feared nor shunned” (Levitt, 2012, 20). The diverse types of people who visit cemeteries make them unique multiplicitous spaces but also can bring a source of conflict. The differences of motivation for using a cemetery can create cultural conflict and cause ambiguity of the space (Levitt, 2012). The meaning and views of cemeteries are diverse and flexible and “it is acknowledged that, in practice, burial space is essentially mutable: its meaning does not remain static over time; and its significance is not uniform over all cultures individual, burial sites often do not present a single landscape: some may contain separate sections with distinctive meanings and purposes” (Rugg, 2000, 259). Acknowledging the differences of use found in cemeteries is important in order to find a balance between the uses.

As a surprisingly multi-purpose space, cemeteries can offer a wide range of uses to a wide range of people. They can be visited by people of religion in a sacred way and be places of personal reflection and experience. They can be visited in large groups for ghost tours, where there is a feeling of excitement and the unknown. Cemeteries can be used for educational purposes and open doors to the past for researchers or history buffs. Even with differences between the groups the cemetery offers a unique space for sacred and recreational uses alike.

Works Cited

Francis, Doris. 2003. Cemeteries as Cultural Landscapes. Mortality, Vol 8, No. 2. 222-227. http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/jhamlin/4960/Lists for Graveyards/cultural landscapes.pdf

Friar Thomas Rosica. 2008. “This is Holy Ground: The Significance of Catholic Cemeteries”, article on website http://saltandlighttv.org/blogfeed/getpost.php?id=1510

Gentry, Glenn. 2007. Walking with the Dead: The Place of Ghost Walk Tourism in Savanna, Georgia. Southeastern geographer, Volume 47, No 2. University if North Carolina Press. 222-238. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/223328/pdf

Ghost Tours in New Orleans Cemeteries and Cathedrals- https://ghostcitytours.com/new-orleans/haunted-places/haunted-cemeteries/

Holloway, Julian. 2010. Legend tripping in spooky spaces: ghost tourism and infrastructures of enchantment. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, volume 28, pages 618 – 637. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/109222.pdf

Levitt, Linda. 2012. Solemnity and Celebration: Dark Tourism Experiences at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Journal of Unconventional Parks, Tourism & Recreation Research, Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 20-25. Stephen F. Austin State University.

Rugg, Julie. 2000. Defining the place of burial: what makes a cemetery a cemetery? Mortality, Vol. 5, No. 3. University of York, United Kingdom. http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/jhamlin/4960/Lists%20for%20Graveyards/Defining%20Place.pdf

Stone, P.R. 2006. A dark tourism spectrum: Towards a typology of death and macabre related tourist sites, attractions and exhibitions. Turizam : međunarodni znanstveno-stručni časopis, 54(2), 145-160. https://works.bepress.com/philip_stone/4/

University of Notre Dame, Sacred Spaces: Cemeteries. 2018.   http://faith.nd.edu/s/1210/faith/interior.aspx?pgid=15429

Yuill, Stephanie Marie. 2003. Dark Tourism: Understanding Visitor Motivation at Sites of Death and Disaster. Texas A&M University. http://oaktrust.library.tamu.edu/bitstream/handle/1969.1/89/etd-tamu-2003C-RPTS-Yuill-1.pdf?sequence=1

Sacred Spaces Reimagined

By Alexis Goolgasian

Religions worldwide worship in several types of buildings; Christians have churches, chapels, and sanctuaries; Muslims have mosques; Jews have synagogues; and Buddhists have temples.  Regardless of what religion a person is devoted to, their sanctuaties are a sacred space.  It is nearly impossible to define what a sacred space is considering there are so many different definitions for different religions, however, David Bennett (2016), a journalist for a website entitled Church Year defined a sacred space as, “any space or area that has been dedicated to a sacred (holy) purpose.  An emphasis on sacred space is found in all the world’s major religions: all religions have places set aside as holy, which they use for worship, prayer, and rituals.”  Although sacred spaces are incredibly powerful and moving, it is known that Americans nationwide are abandoning their religions.  Studies showed that in 2007 roughly 16.1% of the American population was unaffiliated with a religion, that number jumped up to 22.8% in 2014, which is nearly 19 million Americans (Shaprio 2015).  Due to the lack of people attending services for their religion or completely leaving their religion behind, many sacred spaces are unable to keep their doors open and end up abandoned (McSwain 2014).  One of the most important things to understand when going over why sacred spaces are being reimaged is why they are being closed in the first place, then going into how people can preserve sacred spaces and turn them into public facilities that would not necessarily be religious – but still be used to allow people to feel as though they are a part of something greater.

Citizens nationwide have gradually decreased their commitment to their faith – leading to the effect of nearly 4,000 to 7,000 sacred spaces closing every year.  This is not to say religion is dying, of course religion will always be a part of the United States of America, this country was founded on a quest to gain religious freedom (McSwain 2014).  However, a study done by Dr. Steve McSwain, an author, speaker, and interfaith activist has found that sacred spaces are going through a “transition.”  Dr. McSwain (2014) has found that there are seven trends that are occurring within the country that are the leading cause to sacred spaces shutting down.  McSwain’s first reason would be the demographic remapping, meaning today Caucasians are roughly 64% of the population, meaning they are the majority; however, in 30-40 years they will be the minority and one in every three people will be of Hispanic descent.  McSwain makes that claim that this will affect sacred spaces because if sacred spaces are not “targeting” Hispanics then their spaces will not be open much longer (McSwain 2014).  Another reason people have stopped attending churches would be technology.  Technology is changing our world in more ways than one, including the way people “do” church.  McSwain makes the claim that Millennials are no longer interested in attending services because they are interested in technology, which many sacred spaces do not incorporate into their services (McSwain 2014).  An additional reason is leadership crisis, which simply means there is abuse that resides in many sacred spaces that are also covered up by the leaders of the place of worship (McSwain 2014).  The following two reasons seem to be able to mesh together – competition and religious pluralism.  Competition is meant to show that people have more activities to pick from to fill up their weekend then just going to services.  As people fill up their time with other activities there is not much time for shame or guilt about not going to worship.  Religious pluralism connects to competition because people not only have more choices when it comes to weekend activities, they have more options in denominations and other religions.  As the United States grows and diversifies so does the amount of religions people have the ability to choose from (McSwain 2014).  A further reason sacred spaces seem to be failing would be the contemporary worship experience.  When sacred spaces give this experience, it means there are praise bands, large screens, praise music, and people can dress casually.  McSwain (2014) says that when people try to make a sacred space with a stained-glass atmosphere pass as contemporary it is like a karaoke singer auditioning for The X Factor.  In other words, he claims that this is one of the most fatal things a place of worship can do.  The final reason explained is phony advertising.  This means that sacred spaces are partaking somewhat false advertising.  McSwain uses a hypothetical quote to explain what this means, “Everybody is welcome here if, by that, you really mean, so long as you’re like the rest of us, straight and in a traditional family” (McSwain 2014).  As these seven factors, along with several others not mentioned, close the doors of many religious buildings it is important to find ways to allow these buildings to remain useful.  The reimaging of churches has been a way to redesign sacred spaces into ways that allow the general public to benefit from the space without the pressures of religion, race, or sexuality being a burden.  Even though religion does not play a role in the reimaging of these places, they are still sacred for various reasons.

The first type of reimaging that was looked at is larger sacred spaces being turned into bookstores or libraries. After the church shut down it was used as a bicycle shed, snake house, and a carnival temple.  Now it is a large bookstore where people can go to browse through large collections of books, get a bite to eat, explore exhibits, lectures, and debates (Wikimedia Commons 2007).  It is understandable how some people may not full understand how or why this store is a sacred space.  For many people currently and in past centuries, a church was a symbol of their intentions to build a community that would last not only for themselves but for their children to spread the word of God (Kuruvilla 2015).  The people who originally occupies this church saw it as a place where they could support one another and create relationships not only with each other but also with their God.  Another example of a church’s evolution into a bookstore would be the Sacred Garden Bookstore in Greensboro, North Carolina.  According to the Sacred Garden Bookstore website, this is a location open to the entire Greensboro community where people can find rest, solitude, and sanctuary.  Sacred Garden also supports the community by holding book clubs, discussion groups, and they even offer reusable canvas bags.  By doing this the owners of the bookstore are able to self-identify as an “ethical business” (About the Sacred Garden Bookstore).  According to Thomas Moore (2012), a blogger for the Huffington Post, these bookstores are not only sacred because they are located in old, abandoned churches, but because bookstores and libraries within themselves are a type of sacred space.  Moore (2012) states that he believes libraries and bookstores are a chapel within themselves.  Not every spiritual tradition is as abstract as people make them out to be.  He goes on to explain that not all spiritual traditions are about creeds and beliefs but are concrete, physical, tangible, and sensual (Moore 2012).  These sacred spaces were once where one would go to find serenity and peace – today there are doing the exact same thing without a formal worship, therefore, these bookstores can be viewed as contemporary sacred spaces.

The second form of reimaging that was looked at would be turning either small or large sacred spaces in to yoga studios.  At Columbia University in Upper Manhattan, New York it is thought that yoga is a “balancing act between trendy and sacred” (Cornell 2018).  The word trendy exemplifies that the typical person who participates in yoga classes is a woman who drinks smoothies and has strong opinions about Zodiac signs.  However, sacred spaces are places that allow people to have traditions – maybe these aspects of a “common yogi” are their contemporary spiritual traditions.  Like many sacred spaces, there are many yoga studios and classes that are donation-based, this way they can be relatively free to whoever feels as though they would like to participate in yoga without worrying about financial issues.  Taking a closer look at the Yoga to the People, the yoga studio observed in Manhattan, their website states, “The fact that [yoga] is being priced out of many people’s reach is in direct conflict with what we consider to be spirit of yoga itself” (Cornell 2018). Sophia Cornell, a journalist of the Columbia Daily, explained how her yoga classes/studio remind her of the Catholic church she grew up in (Cornell 2018).  Cornell goes on to explain that she is not sure if it is the fact that there are donation boxes, if it is the people who flip on their introspective switches, if it is how cleansed she feels when leaving classes, or if it is how the studios doors are always open to those who wish to enter. Cornell (2018) says that after leaving yoga classes she is unwilling to sin, much like when leaving a sacred space.  After people leave their houses of worship they too feel cleansed and that the world is better off without sins.  However, the major thing that makes a former house of worship converted into a yoga studio still sacred is the fact that they both want to teach the same lesson – forgiveness.  Religions and yoga studios worldwide include guidance and practices of forgiveness within one’s self and the people that surround them in their day to day lives (Morrison 2008).  The comparisons between an up and running house of worship and a reimaged sacred space turned into a yoga studio truly are not that different.  Both of these places focus on self-fulfillment and allowing one to be at peace with the world and everyone within it.  Much like the bookstore, these yoga studios can be seen as contemporary sacred spaces.

The final form of reimaged sacred spaces that was observed are places around the world, large or small, that have been converted into community centers.  Generally, community centers are used by anyone of any religions for book clubs, AA meetings, and the occasional celebration, such as birthdays.  In West Philadelphia community leaders believed it was important to save strategic places, such as sacred spaces, in order to provide people with places where they would always feel welcomed and safe (Polimedio 2018).  Richard Kirk, one of the community leaders that took part in this project, explained that churches are one of the oldest places that people would go to interact with members of their community.  Churches also provide a place where people can provide services in order to assist others from after-school care to vocational training (Polimedio 2018).  Kirk went on to explain that the process of converting this church to a community center took time – he brought together focus groups and asked everyone what they would like to see the church become if they could save.  Nearly everyone explained that they would like to keep it a place devoted to assisting others while remaining sacred.  Once enough fundraising and grants built up the necessary funds the Cavalry Center for Culture and Community. Kirk, with a substantial amount of help, was able to provide a community center that now offers monthly meetings between the community and policemen, musical performances, Pentecostal worship services, and Ramadan dinners (Polimedio 2018).  This community center was able to keep their form of sacredness by providing their original services not only to members of their congregation but to everyone who wished to receive assistance in their day to day life – which allows this community center to remain a sacred space without being devoted to one religion.

With the demographic remapping of America, Millennials love for technology, leadership crisis within the sacred spaces, competition with other weekend activities, religious pluralism, failed contemporary worship experience, and phony advertising it is leading to an extensive number of Americans to leave their places of worship.  With this being said, it is the unfortunate truth that places of worship are no longer receiving the amount of funds necessary to keep their doors open to their members.  Houses of worship were made to ensure that people could go worship whenever they felt the need and could leave feeling cleansed and at peace.  Throughout this research it was found that instead of tearing down these sacred buildings or leaving them empty, it is in the nation’s best interest to transform these sacred spaces into places that can benefit everyone, of any religion, whenever they feel the need to find peace without the pressures of religion, sexuality, or race.  Although this study only focused on Christian sacred spaces the exact same steps could be taken to transform synagogues, temples, and mosques.  The rituals and traditions that take place in these houses of worship will be significantly different from what will happen in them when it is reimaged.  However, they will still allow people to find a place that offers them serenity in a calm, sacred environment that will still have sacred traditions that are sensual.  The libraries and bookstores offer book clubs, community gatherings, and displays of important findings that are done worldwide.  Yoga studios offer life lessons such as forgiveness and to be at peace with oneself.  Community centers offer religious events for all religions and meetings to help people with getting their life back on track.  All of these places work to help better their community and make sure that people know that they are not alone in the world.  That within itself is sacred.

Works Cited

About the Sacred Garden Bookstore | Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, “About the Sacred Garden Bookstore”, www.holy-trinity.com/learn/sacred-garden-bookstore/about-the-sacred-garden-bookstore/.

Bennett, David. 2016. “Sacred Space.” Sacred Space | Information, Definition, Images. www.churchyear.net/basic/sacredspace.html.

Cornell, Sophia. 2018. “At Columbia, Yoga Is a Balancing Act Between the Trendy and the Sacred.” Columbia Daily Spectator. www.columbiaspectator.com/the-eye/2018/01/30/at-columbia-yoga-is-a-balancing-act-between-the-trendy-and-the-sacred/.

Kuruvilla, Carol. 2015. “These Abandoned Rural Churches Are Still Powerful Sacred Spaces.” The Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com. www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/these-abandoned-rural-churches-are-still-powerful-sacred-spaces_us_55b9108ae4b0074ba5a7249e.

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Mass Shootings in American Sacred Spaces

By Richard Lewis

Violent events in sacred spaces test a community’s resilience and leave tough questions on how to heal and move forward. Certain violent events, such as mass shootings, are amplified by multiple casualties and media attention. They leave an indelible stain on the community, often making the locations of such events infamous. In the aftermath of such events, how are sacred spaces transformed? I use four case studies from Texas, Louisiana, Colorado, and South Carolina to explore ways that sacred spaces are transformed by mass shootings, through vigil, commemoration, obliteration, or replacement and how they choose to memorialize, reinterpret, or ignore such events.

Mass shootings have taken place in a variety of public and private spaces across the United States. The term mass shooting is contentious, and there is debate over how to define it (Nichols 2017). Congress qualifies mass killing as an event that takes the life of three or more individuals, and the FBI defines mass murder as four or more individuals killed (Mass Shootings 2018). The Congressional Research Service defines a mass shooting as “a multiple homicide incident in which four or more victims are murdered with firearms, within one event, and in one or more locations in close proximity” (Krause, Richardson 2015) and is the working definition used for this paper.

Mass shootings are not the only violent events that occur in sacred spaces. There have been 284 gun violence incidents at churches from between 1980 and 2016 (Diep 2017), but for the purposes of this paper I will focus on mass shooting events which make up but a small number of these gun violence incidents.  Mass shootings are distinct from other shootings at churches in the number of people killed, the impact to the community, and the practice of vigil or commemoration in response to the event. Mass shootings in sacred spaces also leave communities with difficult decisions on what to do with the place of worship that witnessed such violence.

Each of the sacred spaces facing difficult decisions I investigate are Christian places of worship, but Christian churches are not the only sacred spaces to experience mass shooting events. Communities of many faiths in the United States have been forced to confront the trauma of a mass shooting within their place of worship. Mass shootings have occurred in sacred spaces as varied as a Buddhist Temple in Arizona, a Sikh Temple in Wisconsin, and several Jewish Community Centers across the country (Lewis 2017). The question of what to do with a place of worship, the heart of a religious community, following a mass shooting has few easy answers. The answers these communities do come up with is influenced by the specifics of the shooting that occurred, so it is important to understand the circumstances behind each event. One path is for obliteration of the original space and replacement of it with a new sacred space, as seen with First Baptist Church in the small Texas town of Sutherland.

Sutherland, Texas

The deadliest church mass shooting in American history took place on November 5, 2017 at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas (Satija et al. 2017). Sutherland Springs is a small community of 600 people about 40 miles southeast of San Antonio, TX. In the center of the small town sits First Baptist Church, described as the center of life for Sutherland Springs (CBS/AP 2017). November 5th was a Sunday that year, and church services were well underway when David Kelly starting shooting with his AR-15. Kelly was an ex-military man with a past of mental health problems and domestic violence (Hennigan 2017). He went to First Baptist Church because his ex-girlfriend was known to attend, however, she was not there that Sunday, although her grandmother was and became one of his 25 victims that day (Jacobs 2017). Kelly was reportedly cold and calculating, moving through the aisle, checking pews for hiding church goers, emptying 15 magazines (Rosenberg, Berman, and Lowery 2017). After 4 minutes and nearly everyone inside dead, Kelly fled and took his own life (Yan, Stapleton 2017).

The gruesome details are pertinent here because of how disturbing they are. This once sacred space of worship, this heart of the community, was now littered with the lifeless bodies of its congregation. How does this community begin to heal when so many of its members are gone? The first step, as it often is after mass shootings, is the vigil.

Vigils bring together the survivors and the community for the purpose of healing. Vigils heal through several ways. First, they show community solidarity and support for the survivors. They also provide an outlet for community grief, expression, and reflection. Vigils bring communities together after violence has torn it apart. In Sutherland Springs, a candlelight vigil counted the Vice President of the United States Mike Pence and the Governor of Texas, Mike Abbot (Palacios 2017). The extent of fatalities in such a small town might explain the incredible outpouring of support, and the vigil was covered live on television nationwide. Vigils are not always as high profile as the one following the mass shooting at First Baptist Church. In fact, the first vigil held immediately following the shooting was a much more intimate and makeshift gathering of the residents of the small town (Wamsley, Kerrigan 2017). The other case studies that follow also utilized vigils as a method of community healing, and it emerges almost as a universal after mass shootings, especially when they occur in sacred spaces. Vigil brings the community together to heal, but then what?

The second step for First Baptist Church was to decide what to do with their house of worship. Obliteration often follows horrific events that people want to forget about, such mass murders (Foote 2003 7), and the community of First Baptist decided to raze and rebuild. The process of demolition could be understood as cathartic, exorcising the violent past from sight, and hopefully mind. Yonat Shimron writes for the National Catholic Reporter that ““Frank Page, president and CEO of the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, and Steve Gaines, the SBC’s president, confirmed the decision to demolish the church. “They did say, ‘We can’t go back in there,’ said Page, referring to the remaining church members. It’s going to be a reminder of the horrific violence against innocent people.”” (Shimron 2017). An anonymous donor is supplying the money necessary for building a new church after demolishing the current one (Zeal 2017).

The decision of First Baptist Church to obliterate their church and replace it with a new sacred space is understandable.  However, it is important to note that the obliteration of First Baptist is actually more of a transformation than total obliteration. While the original church with its painful reminders will be obliterated, the remaining community of First Baptist is going nowhere and will soon have a new, fresh space for worship. “‘You wouldn’t think they’d want to relive that’, said Andy Wyatt, a resident of Sutherland Springs. ‘They deserve something bigger and better.’” (Shimron 2017).

However, not all communities have the opportunity or resources for “bigger and better”. The Ministry of Jesus Christ Church in Baton Rouge had a much less optimistic outcome from their violent tragedy.

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

The Ministry of Jesus Christ Church was located in a warehouse space on Dallas Street in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. On Sunday May 21st 2006, Anthony Bell walked into the church right before service was ending, and opened fire (Klatell 2006). The mass shooting was the result of a domestic dispute between Bell and the family of pastor Claudia Brown. He shot five church goers, killing four. Pastor Brown, shot in the head, survived, but sadly four of her family members did not (Alford 2006).

Following the tragedy, the Ministry of Jesus Christ Church discontinued use of the space on Dallas Street, and has not been holding services elsewhere (Williams 2007). This may be due to the fact that the four victims in the shooting were members of Pastor Brown’s family. Economics also play a role in deciding how to move forward with a sacred space that hosted a mass shooting. Many small churches in America have limited resources (Kaylor 2015) and if confronted with episodes of violence within their house of worship may not be able to rebuild. As with the case of First Baptist Church in Sutherland, Tx, it is understandable why the church would not want to continue services at the scene of such bloodshed. Unfortunately, the community outpouring that followed in Texas did not occur a decade earlier in Baton Rouge. No extended stories on the national news, no governors or other dignitaries, no anonymous donor to fund a rebuilding effort. In the case of the Ministry of Jesus Christ Church, the decision not to continue services at Dallas Street or anywhere else may have had everything to do with the extent of community support in the aftermath. That in turn may have something to do with the nature of the mass shooting. While both were deadly, the extent of the number of victims in Texas may have elevated the tragedy in the national narrative. I suspect that one or more vigils would have been held after the mass shooting at the Ministry of Jesus Christ Church in Baton Rouge but could not find newspaper records of any. I tried reaching out to the Ministry of Jesus Christ Church with no success. If they are still operational, there is no online record of them. All my research points to them never resuming services after the attack.

After a mass shooting, a religious community may not be able to recover, as seen in Baton Rouge. Or, it may deem it necessary to destroy a once sacred space and replace it, as in Sutherland. However, another option is to retain the site and continue with worship services, as both the New Life Church in Colorado Springs and the AME Church of Charleston did.

Colorado Springs, Colorado

First Baptist Church in Sutherland and the Ministry of Christ Church in Baton Rouge were both small community churches. The New Life Church in Colorado Springs would fall on the opposite end of the spectrum. New Life Church is a nondenominational evangelical megachurch with a membership of more than 10,000 people and several campuses in the Colorado Springs area (New Life Church 2018). On Sunday, December 9th, 2007 Matthew Murray, bitter after his expulsion from a youth missionary training organization, shot and killed two members at the youth missionary training center in Arvada, CO before heading to the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, where he would kill 2 more people and wound three others before being shot dead by a security guard (Vick, Branigin 2007). This detours slightly from the definition put forward earlier. While Murray did in fact take four lives that Sunday, the victims were split between two different locations. The victims at New Life Church were shot outside of the megachurch, in the parking lot. This may have played a part in the church’s decision to continue services within their space, as the megachurch itself was not the setting of mass casualties. The relatively small number of victims in relation to the massive size of membership at the church could possibly have the psychological effect of minimizing the impact to the community. This is not to say this community was not impacted and affected by the loss of life, but that there is a different magnitude to what happened at New Life Church in Colorado and what happened at First Baptist Church in Texas, where half the congregation was slaughtered. The price tag of the New Life megachurch may also have played some part in the decision to remain in their space of worship, as obliteration and replacement would come with a hefty cost. The megachurch was originally constructed with a 17 million dollar price tag (Black 2006). Jeanne Assam, the security guard who took down the shooter and possibly saved more lives (Vick, Branigin 2007), also gives this tragedy a hero which could alter the calculus of the tragedy’s impact on the community.

The choice to remain and continue services within the sacred space of New Life Church did come with changes. ““After New Life Church’s Life-Safety Team shot Murray, “that kinda put an exclamation point on the necessity of having a formal, full-time program here at New Life — what we call Life-Safety,” said Jeff Kowell, the church’s director of life safety.” (Gibson 2017) In response to the shooting, New Life Church bolstered their Life-Safety security staff and implemented new security protocols. Interviewed a decade later by Spencer Wilson for KKTV after the massacre at First Baptist Church in 2017, senior pastor at New Life Church Brady Boyd explained how things have changed at the megachurch since the mass shooting in 2007. “‘We have multiple layers of security at church … we have off-duty police officers in their uniform on our campus,’ Boyd stated. ‘One of the great things about living in a military town is we have a lot of highly-trained military people who attend our church. One of the way that they serve the congregation is by volunteering on our security team.’” (Wilson 2017).

Safety was not the only change to come. New Life Church memorialized the victims outside of the megachurch on the one-year anniversary of the shooting. A stone bench with two blue spruce pine trees was dedicated in memory of the two sisters shot and killed that Sunday morning leaving church (Banda 2008). A memorial is more than just a way to remember the victims, but also a means for sanctification. “Sanctification occurs when events are seen to hold some lasting positive meaning that people wish to remember—a lesson in heroism or perhaps a sacrifice for community. A memorial or monument is the result” (Foote 2003 7). While the events at New Life could hardly be seen as holding a lasting, positive meaning, there is certainly the realization that this could have been much worse without the hero, which along with the lives cut short is something worth remembering.

Remembering is at the core of the decisions that the next church took after a mass shooting. The history behind the Emmanuel African Methodist Church in Charleston prepared the church to turn a mass shooting tragedy into community triumph.

Charleston, South Carolina

The Emmanuel African Methodist (AME) Church in Charleston, South Carolina is one of the oldest and largest African American congregations in the south and has been a fixture of the city since 1816 (History 2018), enduring through times of upheaval, violence, and destruction. It is both a center of the African American religious community and a historical landmark, hosting civil rights marches and speakers such as Booker T. Washington, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Coretta Scott King (Elliott 2016). The trials and tribulations of the past were perhaps prelude for overcoming its most recent tragedy.

On the night of June 17th, 2015, a small group of worshippers gathered for a bible study at Mother Emmanuel, as the AME Church is locally known. Senior pastor and South Carolina state senator Clementa Pinckney led the study with 11 other church members in the wood-paneled basement space of the church. An unexpected guest, a 21 year old man named Dylann Roof, was welcomed into the group where he participated in the bible study before rising out of his seat, removing a glock from his backpack, and opening fire into the group, killing nine people (Sullivan 2016). It was the largest mass shooting in a church in the United States for a short two years before being eclipsed by the massacre at First Baptist in Sutherland, Tx (Charleston Church Shooting 2018).

The Mother Emmanuel Church is no stranger to racism and violence. After a slave revolt plot centered around church members was uncovered in 1822, the church was burned in retribution, and the South Carolina legislature outlawed African-American churches. The AME congregation persevered in secret until the end of the Civil War in 1865 (History 2018). The church became a focal point of the civil rights movement and beyond. Before his death, Pastor Pinckney used his pulpit to demand justice for African-American victims of police shootings, spoke on the South Carolina senate floor about implantation of body cameras for officers, and led community rallies in Charleston (Brammer, Lewis 2015).

In the wake of the shooting, vigils were held to remember the victims and try and heal the community, both locally and nationally. AME churches from around the country held vigil and prayed for those lost and affected by the violence (AME Vigils Nationwide Gather Communities in Prayer 2015). A string of high profile leaders visited the church, including South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, Vice President Joe Biden, and several US Congress members (Elliot 2016). A bipartisan Congressional group made pilgrimage to Mother Emmanuel a year after the shooting, focused on the role of religion and civil rights history in South Carolina (Dumain 2016). There was a need for more than just vigil, as this attack on AME was an attack on faithful African-Americans everywhere. This horrible mass shooting was just the most recent in a string of attacks over several decades on African-American churches, from the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, AL to the rash of arsons through the 1990s (Parker 2015). The AME decided not to close its doors, but rather opened them the very next Sunday following the shooting. In an interview with NBC News, a senior elder at AME summarized the reasoning behind this move, saying “Because the doors are open on this Sunday it sends a message to every demon in hell and on Earth that no weapon, no weapon shall prosper. Some wanted the divide between black and white and brown,” but “no weapon formed against us shall prosper.” (Angulo 2015).

The decision of the AME community to neither obliterate or rebuild their sacred space, but to instead continue worship and memorialize the tragedy, is rooted in the church’s rich history as well as the motivations behind the attack. The church’s history and importance to the African-American community is what made it a target to Roof, a self-proclaimed white supremacist who sought to kill African-Americans as a catalyst for a race war (Charleston Church Shooting 2018). That same history is why the church chose to not forget the events of June 17th. As mentioned before, this is a religious community all to familiar with violence and tragedy. They have been and continue to be a resilient community, and the continued use of their sacred space is a testament to their perseverance and determination. A memorial at AME has been commissioned to remember the nine who lost their lives from the same architect of the National September 11th Memorial in New York City.  In Angela Helm’s piece for The Root, architect Michael Arad says ““If we are able to shine a light on the beauty, resiliency and love that was shown by members of this congregation and the community of Charleston, we will succeed in showing the best of humankind in the wake of the worst”” (Helm 2017). A museum of African American history being constructed in Charleston will also be dedicated to those lives lost at the AME Church shooting (Carlson 2015).

Such commemoration is key to the church’s continued longevity, as they have taken the attack and turned it into an opportunity for reflection, healing, and progress in the face of hate. This was a declaration that this community would not and could not be silenced by violence or hate. The steps this community have taken since the shooting aim to uplift, reaffirm, and remind all that Mother Emmanuel is not going anywhere.

Conclusions

Despite the differences in the Christian communities presented here and the different ways they responded to an attack in their sacred space, there are two similarities of note. The themes of evil and forgiveness arise multiple times in the stories of these afflicted communities. Felicia Sanders, a survivor of the AME shooting testifying at shooter Roof’s trial, described him to the court as “Evil, evil, evil”, reported Oliver Laughland for the Guardian (Laughland 2016).  Ed Stetzer, a professor at Wheaton College’s Billy Graham Center, commented in a Washington Post article on the Sutherland, Texas shooting that “This is the perfect place. People are focusing on something other than their own safety. Heartbreakingly, that is an easy target. I think that what we find in most cases is that there’s a motive tied into the evil . . . Evil knows where to find the good” (Phillips 2017). I would assume that any community, religious or not, looking for answers as to why such seemingly senseless violence could happen, could only gravitate towards evil as an answer. What good reason is there for taking multiple lives in a sacred space? None of course, and so we are left with evil, a fitting foil for these religious communities.

The theme of forgiveness is just as prevalent across the community responses as evil, which also makes sense. These are Christian communities, and while varied in denomination, location, and congregation, they have the teachings of Christ in common. Forgiveness and mercy permeate Christian teachings and people draw on their faith in times of tragedy and suffering. Jesus forgave those who crucified him, and that “extreme act of forgiveness is at the heart of Christianity” (Hughes 2018).

Forgiveness may help a community heal, but it does little to stop a disturbing trend. Violence in sacred spaces are increasing in frequency. “There were more shootings in Christian churches between 2006 and 2016—147 of them—than in the 25 years prior” (Diep 2017). Churches are sacred spaces but ones vulnerable to violence. The question of how to deal with increasing violence has forced churches to make tough decisions. Churches may look towards increased safety, as in the case of New Life Church, or they may choose to stand resolute with open arms, as in the case of Mother Emmanuel.

Violence is indelible, especially in sacred spaces. Those who hold that space sacred will forever remember the intrusion and assault within their space of worship. Vigils, big or small, facilitate community healing after a mass shooting in a sacred space. Communities dealing with loss of life and desecration of their church may choose to replace their church, memorialize it, or obliterate it, for varying reasons. The fate of these sacred spaces is determined by the community itself, the nature of the violent event, and the attention received in the aftermath. Mass shootings may transcend the local level to become national events, but the ways these churches deal with their sacred spaces are firmly rooted in the local community.

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The Versatility of Assistens Cemetery in Denmark

By Marion Punches

In the urban environment space is precious and limited.  To obtain space, one must contend with the competing needs of the city.  Two common types of space that need careful consideration are those of sacred spaces and those of recreation.  Both of these play important roles in our societies and can on occasion be fulfilled by same space.  The Assistens Cemetery in Copenhagen, Denmark is one such example, as it allows users to have a space to show respect for the dead while simultaneously acting as a space for recreation.  I was fortunate enough to visit Assistens during by time studying abroad in 2017 and the experience has made me curious about the variety of functions available to visitors.  This essay will look at the historical and cultural factors that have shaped Assistens cemetery, then at how cemeteries can act as versatile spaces and finally, how this versatility preserves the space and its inherent sacredness.

For those unfamiliar with Denmark, it is crucial to first understand their particular relationship between church and state.  First and foremost, Denmark has an official state religion and even though that relationship has changed with time, its influence can be traced all the way back to the formation of Denmark and “Denmark’s birth certificate” the jelling stone from around 965 B.C (Iversen, 2018).  In the modern context, Denmark is considered one of the world’s most secularized countries and yet Article 4 of the Constitution of Denmark still grants the Evangelical Lutheran church as a state supported institution by considering it the church of the Danish people (Iversen, 2018).  Hans Iversen, Director of the Center for Church Research at the University of Copenhagen further expresses this discrepancy stating that, “religion and Christianity play only a minor, often indirect, role in public life.”  This quote alludes to the shift of religion and by extension the need for versatility in sacred spaces for them to remain relevant and culturally significant.

The general versatility of Assistens has been crucial to keeping it operational.  According to the City of Copenhagen’s 2016 Brochure, the cemetery only remained in operation due originally to its functionality, then as time went on for its intrinsic value.  In 1951 its main value to the city was for burial ground and this held true even to 1989, although by then there were limited areas for this purpose (City of Copenhagen, 2016).  Most recently in 2014 Assistens was listed for preservation, demonstrating that its purpose for remaining open shifted from its functionality as a burial ground to the intrinsic value it provides the city (City of Copenhagen, 2016).  This continued value, beyond its original purpose, demonstrates that the space provides intrinsic social value through its versatility and inherent sacredness.

The Assistens Cemetery’s versatility differentiates itself from other cemeteries.  I first stumbled upon Assistens during a scavenger hunt for my transportation class.  We were trying to check off locations on our list when someone in the group recommended we cut through the cemetery because it was a lot quicker.  It took us a while to find the trail, but before I could get too skeptical we were on a nicely paved path and surprisingly no one around us thought it was weird that we were biking through a cemetery.  This anecdote is my experience of Assistens as a commuter, however this type of activity is not unusual for Assistens.  On another visit to Assistens, this time with a tour guide as part of my transportation class, we were told that the city considered preventing bikes from being able to frequent the cemetery, but were met with local backlash as parents argued that it is a safer way to take their children to school since the path is not parallel with, nor crosses car-traffic, and is less crowded than the main bike roads.

Besides acting as a safe way to travel, the cemetery’s versatility makes it a destination.  It does this through its enduring and its temporary/ seasonal activities.  This overlap between long-term and short-term activities form the layers of versatility in this fluid space.  Assistens is not just a cemetery or convenient pathway, it is a garden, tourist attraction, gathering place, relaxation place, memoriam/ place of remembrance, and occasionally a place to catch a performance. The most common word used to describe Assistens was “cemetery” followed by “park” and a variety of words describing walking related activities along with its overall beauty (Yelp, 2012, 2014a, 2014b, 2015, 2016a, 2016b, 2016c, 2017).  Reviewers on Yelp mentioned activities such as spending “time with family or friends”, “enjoying the weather”, having a “picnic”, “walking dogs”, seeing “shows”, and  going on “guided tours”, “bike rides” or “morning jog[s]”.  Bicycling was mentioned by a few reviewers and one tartly remarked that even cyclists were on their best behavior because such a place was “too nice a place to rush” (Yelp, 2012).  Yelp reviewers described Assistens as “beautiful”, “attractive” and “delightful”, with one person even going as far as to consider it “Good for either a contemplative stroll, or a romantic wander” (Yelp, 2012).  While one person mentioned that among the beautiful plant-life there were “some creepy trees, admittedly”, they went on to stress that there is “no-horror feel” being there and to “promise you it won’t be creepy to hang out” (Yelp, 2016b, 2014b).  One commenter even went on to recommend it as a place to “bring the kids” or similar to the “romantic wander” sentiment as “an interesting choice for a first date” (Yelp, 2014b). Copenhagen Green’s tourism page echoes this, describing Assistens as “no ordinary graveyard” and “a public park and a cultural treasure trove, where you can explore the history of Denmark, sunbathe on the lawns and relax with friends under the trees.” (Life Exhibitions, 2018).   Both of these pages are geared towards promoting Assistens as a place of leisure, with Copenhagen Greens mentioning that it is located in an area with “Plenty of shops and food and drink” nearby but also commenting on how wheelchair friendly most of its paths are and one Yelp reviewer explicitly stating “it is close to Jægersborggade where all the nice restaurants, cafes, wine and beer bars are located. Totally worth a visit” (Life Exhibitions, 2018 and Yelp, 2016c).  While both websites list a variety of leisurely activities guests can partake in, they neglect to acknowledge the deeper sacred meanings of the space beyond briefly stating that it is a cemetery and highlighting the famous people buried there.

While the versatility of this space is heavily emphasized due to its functionality, there is still an underlying sacredness that remains.  Of course whether a space is sacred or not is always up for debate because the answer is subjective and depends upon the individual; however, I would argue that the collective opinion of its visitors suggest that it does maintain its initial designation as a sacred space.  In all eight of the Yelp reviews in English for the park every visitor specifically mentioned that it was a cemetery and/ or that there were gravestones present indicating that despite the activity they engaged there, the original designation of the space was not forgotten.  Another factor to consider is that the space acts as a public good which is befitting to a sacred space since selflessness and charity are heavily ingrained into many religious teachings.  The Church of Denmark specifically supports this idea by saying, “It is our task to pass on love through the family and society, and so it is important for Lutherans to build up a society characterised by solidarity, with the strong helping the weak” (Lindhardt, n.d).  These ideas of solidarity and the strong helping the weak are demonstrated at Assistens with an 800 square foot section of the cemetery being reserved for burying homeless people who have passed (Kirk, 2015).  The effort to create this reserved space was brought about by a collaboration of an advocacy group and the city of Copenhagen itself (Kirk, 2015).  This step is even more significant given the prestige of some of the cemetery’s famous residents further proving this idea of unity, even in death.  While these actions and ideas may seem unusual to an outsider like myself, Denmark has a tradition and culture of collectivism stemming from interconnecting religious and social ideologies (Kirk, 2015).  This type of abnegation for the collective and emphasis on the common good seems entirely fitting of a sacred space and the common assertion of most religions as working to better mankind.  Specifically looking at the Church of Denmark, two important areas of focus are the eighth and ninth dogmas as described by Bo Kristian Holm, Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at Aarhus University for the Church of Denmark’s official website.  Dogma eight explains that “Luther was convinced that man was created to do good works for the good of his neighbour. However, these works are for one’s neighbours and man cannot justify himself by them” (Holm, 2018).  Therefore it is seen as one’s duty to do good for the community, although doing so does not place on at a higher status in God’s eyes (Holm, 2018).  This is expressly corroborated in ninth dogma with “No one Christian is closer to God than others”, but also goes along with the cultural idea of prioritizing the collective (Holm, 2018).  Even before the dedication of this plot to the homeless, Copenhagen already had a history of communal burial with about 50% of its residents opting to be cremated and buried in unmarked plots (Kirk, 2015).  This is attributed to social and cultural sentiments that were growing in the 1920s with the rise of collectivist movements and social democracy (Kirk, 2015).  Stine Helweg, a cemeteries specialist of Copenhagen reflects these ideas stating, ‘“As you stood shoulder to shoulder with someone you didn’t know when you were alive, you would choose the same concept when you died”’ (Kirk, 2015).  This strong tradition of collectivism from religious, social, and cultural backgrounds seems to form a strong basis for these type of practices in Copenhagen and Danish society as a whole.  Therefore, it makes sense that being buried together with strangers would not be seen as beneath one’s status but rather as a reaffirming these principals.

Besides the inclusivity of the space reflecting religious values, Assistens’ use of space further exemplifies the teachings of the church.  Assistens cemetery technically has a chapel, however its function has shifted from its expressly religious purposes to being the location for its current Cultural Center activities (Kulturcentret Assistens, 2018b).  While the type of activities in the chapel have changed, they still possess religious undertones as they interpret their people’s history, culture, and virtues, along with tackling big existential questions about life and death (Kulturcentret Assistens, 2018a, 2018d).  Assistens offers educational programs that are meant to guide visitors to interpret the physical and intangible elements of the cemetery.  One program they offer is called the “ethical workshop” which is geared towards children and young adults and focuses on cultural values and abstract concepts in a way that is personalized and at the pace of each student (Kulturcentret Assistens, 2018a).  The “Etisk Vaerksted” or Ethical Workshop page describes its teachings as, “We let “death” be personified in the knot, skeleton or figure that lends its appearance from allegorical figures of “time”…Death becomes what gives life meaning. All living must die at some point. One should not think of death all the time, but because death is waiting, life will be alive. The cemetery reminds us that life ends, [that our life is a continued existence until death]” (Kulturcentret Assistens, 2018a).  These teachings incorporate the context of this space and their collective values to explain the mysteries of life and death, reiterate universal truths, and offer consolation, which is arguably the aim of religion.

By having the space be accessible, in both a physical as well as a functional manner, visitors interact with the space in a new way that does not diminish the space but rather, incorporates it to fit the needs of the city and its people.  This incorporation of the space, whether for a quick trip or frequently in the daily routines of visitors, is a more light-hearted and almost comforting way to acknowledge otherness.  That being said, beneath the light-heartedness of the space there remains an underlying feeling of remembrance and reverence given to Assistens that would be absent in a space without such sacred elements and intrinsic meaning.  The Assistens Cemetery Brochure demonstrates this balance effectively by stating, “as long as the surrounding walls have provided a setting for the end of life, life itself has also unfolded here” then proceeding to quote the poet Klaus Høeck “‘death is as close to reality as life”’ (City of Copenhagen, 2016).  This juxtaposition between what would normally be considered a place of mourning and solitude and the way people experience life here is eloquently expressed by one visitor’s as “although inherently a sad place meant for remembrance the layout, flowers and elaborate Tombstones cannot help but make one smile” (Yelp, 2017).  The original purpose of the cemetery and its inherent sacredness is thus acknowledged, however the shift in mindset and feeling lets us better understand how the meaning of the space blends in with how it is perceived and used.

For me, this place is the epitome of remembering by focusing and celebrating life instead of mourning death.  While this idea may not have been the original intention of the creators of Assistens, I cannot help but think that it is an interesting speculation, sentiment, or result.  Of course, this is an outsider’s perspective of the cemetery, and of the Yelp reviews I analyzed about Assistens, none mentioned a personal connection with any of the people that have been laid to rest there.  This is perhaps why my perspective and experience of Assistens is more of a light-hearted contemplation of the lives and times of those whom I did not know.  The experience one would have if they had a loved one buried here could be entirely different and could cause any of their future interactions with this space to be reflective of that.  Curious about this perspective, I tried to find the perspective of someone who knew Assistens as the resting place of a loved one, but I could not find any examples even through a general google search.  This lack of examples potentially points to most of Assistens visitors having an outsider’s bias and could explain why there seems to be relative consensus that Assistens is predominantly a place of recreation.  With no examples of an insider’s perspective of Assistens, I was then curious as to the qualification process.  When I was not able to find any results online or on the Assistens Official site, I contacted them.  Their response was “Everybody can be buried at ASSISTENS. And you dont have to live i[n] Copenhagen.” (Kulturcentret Assistens, 2018c).  I was really surprised by this declaration of broad inclusivity of this cemetery, although given the areas for people of the street and shared burials, I probably should not have been.  In a way, this further demonstrates the idea that we are all united in death, so why have barriers as to who can be buried here.  This is really quite fitting for a space that seemingly unites death and life.

While this type of cemetery may seem unusual from an American perspective, in a way it’s an oddly reassuring and more positive outlook on death as a natural process rather than something that should forever be mourned.

Its versatility and fluidity greatly benefit the public and have even helped with its preservation.  Despite this versatility, the case was made for its continued sacredness by analyzing the impressions of visitors and how the spaces’ use conforms to the basic principles of The Church of Denmark.  In other words, while the function of the space permits transformation given the occasion, past experiences, the community, and the individual it still remains inherently sacred.  In doing so, this space operates as a connection between those past and those living, maintaining respect and reverence of those who came before and a functional space for the living that helps to better the surrounding neighborhoods while promoting community in a beautiful, green space.

Notes:

For the Yelp reviews I choose to stick to the ones that were in English.  While google translate seemed to do a decent job at deciphering some of the Danish reviews, I did not want to say with certainty what the meaning of their words were when it could have easily been lost in translation, thus invalidating my representation of visitors’ perspectives of the space.

The styling of the Yelp reviews in this analysis were inspired by the style that Gillian Rose, Monica Degen, and Begum Basdas used to represent the opinions of the people they interviewed in More on ‘big things’: building events and feelings.

Works Cited

City of Copenhagen. 2016. “Assistens Cemetery.” 3rd ed. The Technical and Environmental Administration. Brochure. Accessed May, 2017. kk.sites.itera.dk/apps/kk_pub2/pdf/1552_nLEkV8G1NZ.pdf

Holm, Bo. n.d. “Ten Important Dogmas”. Lutheran Church. Accessed April 10, 2018. http://www.lutheranchurch.dk/who-we-are/what-we-believe/ten-important-dogmas/.

Iversen, Hans. n.d. “Religion in Denmark.” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark. Accessed April 2, 2018. http://denmark.dk/en/society/religion/.

Kulturcentret Assistens. 2018a. “Etisk Vaerksted” (Ethical Workshop). Accessed April 16, 2018. http://assistens.dk/etisk-vaerksted/.

Kulturcentret Assistens. 2018b. “Kapellet” (The Chapel). Accessed April 17, 2018. http://assistens.dk/kapellet/.

Kulturcentret Assistens. 2018c. “Kulturcentret Assistens.” Accessed April 10, 2018. http://assistens.dk/.

Kulturcentret Assistens. 2018d. “Undervisningstilbud” (Educational Programs). Accessed April 16, 2018. http://assistens.dk/undervisningstilbud/.

Life Exhibitions. 2018. “Assistens Cemetery.” Københavner Grøn (Copenhagen Green). Accessed March 18, 2018. http://www.kobenhavnergron.dk/place/assistens-kirkegard/?lang=en

Lindhardt, Bishop Jan. n.d. “The Faith of the Lutheran Church”. Accessed April 18, 2018. http://www.lutheranchurch.dk/who-we-are/what-we-believe/the-faith-of-the-lutheran-church/.

Kirk, Mimi. 2015. “A Place for the Homeless to Honor Their Dead.” CityLab. Accessed April 2, 2018. https://www.citylab.com/equity/2015/12/a-place-for-the-homeless-to-honor-their-dead/422067/.

Yelp. 2017. “Assistens Kirkegården” (Cemetery) . August 16. Accessed April 2, 2018. https://www.yelp.com/biz/assistens-kirkeg%C3%A5rden-k%C3%B8benhavn?sort_by=date_desc.

Translations from Danish to English

Babylon Translation Software. 2017. Accessed April 17, 2018. http://translation.babylon-software.com/danish/to-english/.

Google Translate. n.d. Accessed April 2, 2018. https://translate.google.com/?tl=hu.