TY - JOUR

T1 - Sacred but not holy

T2 - Awe, spectacle, and the heritage gaze in Danish religious heritage contexts

AU - Salemink, Oscar

AU - Poulsen, Rasmus Rask

AU - Ahl, Sofie Isager

PY - 2020

Y1 - 2020

N2 - Based on an ideal-typical distinction between the “holy” and the “sacred”, this paper considers the effects of the heritagisation of religious spaces in the three Danish World Heritage sites of Jelling, Roskilde, and Christiansfeld. Religious sites are often intended as spectacles inspiring religious awe in the religious constituency, but when considered heritage, the site becomes a spectacle for a different public, for whom the sacrality of the place is not necessarily motivated by religious piety. Instead, the church as heritage site may be a sacralised focal point for ontological pride on behalf of another, secular constituency, like the region or nation, or for vicarious nostalgia of a tourist public. The religious congregation itself might become the object of a heritage gaze on the part of cultural experts and tourists who foreground the “authenticity” of the religious experience in the spatial environment of the place in line with UNESCO principles. In this paper, we argue that the overlaying of a heritage gaze over a religious gaze results in the potential hybridisation of religion as a category of heritage. This not only hybridises religious piety but inadvertently frames it as cultural heritage through the secular, immanent frame of heritage.

AB - Based on an ideal-typical distinction between the “holy” and the “sacred”, this paper considers the effects of the heritagisation of religious spaces in the three Danish World Heritage sites of Jelling, Roskilde, and Christiansfeld. Religious sites are often intended as spectacles inspiring religious awe in the religious constituency, but when considered heritage, the site becomes a spectacle for a different public, for whom the sacrality of the place is not necessarily motivated by religious piety. Instead, the church as heritage site may be a sacralised focal point for ontological pride on behalf of another, secular constituency, like the region or nation, or for vicarious nostalgia of a tourist public. The religious congregation itself might become the object of a heritage gaze on the part of cultural experts and tourists who foreground the “authenticity” of the religious experience in the spatial environment of the place in line with UNESCO principles. In this paper, we argue that the overlaying of a heritage gaze over a religious gaze results in the potential hybridisation of religion as a category of heritage. This not only hybridises religious piety but inadvertently frames it as cultural heritage through the secular, immanent frame of heritage.

KW - Faculty of Social Sciences

KW - World Heritage

KW - religious heritage

KW - sacred

KW - holy

KW - Denmark

UR - http://notebooks.drustvo-antropologov.si/Notebooks/article/view/128

U2 - 10.5281/zenodo.4604148

DO - 10.5281/zenodo.4604148

M3 - Journal article

VL - 26

SP - 70

EP - 99

JO - Anthropological Notebooks

JF - Anthropological Notebooks

SN - 1408-032X

IS - 3

ER -