Ziada, H., 2018.

Sacred Spaces, in Encyclopedia of Christianity in the Global South, edited by Mark A. Lamport & George T. Kurian.

Religious experience involves an imagined encounter with
transcendental being(s). Dream states aside, all transcendental religious experiences occur by necessity in a material setting: an arrangement of enclosing planes and/or
relations between bod(ies) and objects, further qualified
by light, color, and usually symbols. Religious experience
is somehow mediated by space. While spiritual experiences
occur in nature, such as mountaintops or dark caves, this
entry is concerned with human-constructed sacred spaces,
intentionally designed and built as a persistent appeal for
interaction with transcendental being(s). How then does the
human artifice of shaping space scaffold religious experience? More specifically, in what ways is human-made space necessary to conjuring Christian holiness?