[Asec] Fwd: Call for Papers: Sacred Spaces in Motion

[Olga Louchakova-Schwartz]

please post if possible

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Iulian Apostolescu <iulian.apostolescu at gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Feb 20, 2021 at 1:22 AM
Subject: Call for Papers: Sacred Spaces in Motion
To: <sophere at simplelists.com>, <sophere-webinar at googlegroups.com>, Olga
Louchakova-Schwartz <olouchakova at gmail.com>


Sacred Spaces in Motion

*RES 2/2021*

Our contemporary world witnesses contrasting approaches to sacred spaces.
While in some regions (especially in Western Europe) there is a decrease in
the interest for religious buildings as places for worship due to the
decline of the number of practicing believers, and they are sometimes
reused as public institutions, hotels or restaurants, in other regions one
can testify for a revival of an intense attention to religious
architecture. This is manifested either through the large-scale
construction of national churches (e.g., Church of Saint Sava, Belgrade;
People’s Salvation Cathedral, Bucharest), the reconversion of former
museums into places of worship (e.g., Chora or Hagia Sophia Museums), or
shifts in their religious status (e.g., recent transformation of churches
into mosques, as with the former Lutheran Church of Capernaum in Hamburg,
Germany or the former church of Santa Maria Valverde in Venice). These
contradictory tendencies and dynamics in understanding the role of sacred
buildings highlights the exploitation of sacred spaces as areas for the
affirmation of religious identity and negotiation of power resorts.
Buildings concentrate different values, expectations, and social
projections of a religious community, and most times the physical place
itself where the building is consecrated bears an importance of its own
(e.g., Al-Aqsa Mosque, Dome of the Rock and proposed third Temple of
Solomon in Jerusalem, Great Mosque of Mecca). The highly controversial call
for a third Temple of Solomon exemplifies just how important the exact
geography for worshiping God may be. But when different denominations
request the same place (e.g., Temple Mount/Noble Sanctuary of Jerusalem),
or the same building (e.g., the Hagia Sophia) neither immediate nor
long-lasting solutions are easily found.

This unique and topical issue of RES aims to bring together papers that
deal with (but will not be limited to) questions such as: How do sacred
buildings reflect the interferences of the political with the religious?
What are the legal and theological bases for the (re)conversion of churches
into mosques and of mosques into churches? To what extent and what
foreseeable consequences building, decommissioning, repurposing, or
converting religious spaces represent a form of domination and exclusion?
Can one envision sacred spaces as communion places for different
confessions or religions? Can historical sacred buildings become ecumenical
edifices, in which different confessions and religions could worship under
the same roof? We are also looking for contributions that discuss the
complex significance that religious edifices bear in the architectural
language of sacred spaces, from architects, archaeologists, art historians,
historians of religions, theologians, philosophers or political scientists.
Contributions are welcome on the confessional, ethical, political and
aesthetical importance of historical sacred spaces in Abrahamic religions,
such as the Hagia Sophia and historic Asia Minor, those in Jerusalem and
the Holy Land, the Tigris-Euphrates Basin region and the wider Middle East,
as well as from the Balkans.



Deadline: May 1, 2021

Email: res at ecum.ro.

Contributions will be published in English or German and are to follow RES
editorial guidelines:

http://www.res.ecum.ro/guidelines/.


*Iulian Apostolescu*

*Website* <https://unibuc.academia.edu/IulianApostolescu>
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