Abstract:
This study asks: How do Christians in selected UK congregations understand and experience sacred place, and to what extent do their accounts align with essentialist or socio-constructivist theories of sacred space? It tests whether sacredness is understood as an intrinsic property of the site, as “God's house”, or whether the sacred (or the Holy) is perceived wherever Christians gather to worship.
The research adopts a critical phenomenological approach. I collected data through semi-structured interviews with forty-five participants across four Christian traditions in Scotland: the Scottish Episcopal Church, the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of Scotland, and the Society of Friends (in the latter case, I also visited a Quaker meeting house in northern England).
I recruited participants through congregational invitations, except at the Scottish Episcopal Church, where the Rector insisted on their selection. The interviews explored personal experiences of sacred places, theological beliefs, and liturgical practices. I also included a quantitative exercise in which participants rated, on a 1-10 scale, their preference for two hymns that represented contrasting understandings of sacred places. Data analysis revealed patterns indicating how participants negotiate transcendence and immanence in the places where they worship.
Findings showed that neither essentialist nor socio-constructivist models, taken in isolation, adequately explained participants’ experiences. Quantitatively, denominational averages varied: Roman Catholic participants averaged 4.5, indicating stronger alignment with the “God's house” view, while Scottish Episcopalian participants averaged 6.9, favouring the “where people gather” view. The Church of Scotland and the Society of Friends averaged 6.7 and 6.1, respectively, although the latter score was constrained by low participation at one site and by no engagement at the other.
Qualitatively, three patterns emerged. First, participants held a dynamic understanding of sacred place, in which theological belief, liturgical practice, and spatial design interact, rather than viewing it as a static metaphysical reality or a purely social construct. Second, they experienced their places of worship as sites where transcendence and immanence meet, enabling both individual spiritual encounter and communal integration. Third, while some participants reported experiences of conflict or exclusion associated with sacred sites, others described therapeutic effects, including acceptance and social cohesion.
The study proposes an integrated model that moves beyond the essentialism-versus-socio-constructivism binary. It argues that a sacred place is best understood as a lived, ongoing human experience in which divine transcendence is embodied in belief, ritual, and design. This model offers a framework for Christians and others to articulate the relationship among place, practice, and perception without reducing sacredness to a location or social context.
