Landscapes of the Sacred

Belden C. Lane is the Hotfelder Distinguished Professor in the Humanities in the Department of Theological Studies at Saint Louis University.

• Contents: Preface to the Johns Hopkins Edition Introduction: Place and Meaning in American Spirituality Part 1: Place in American Religious Life Chapter 1: Axioms for the Study of Sacred Place Chapter 2: Giving Voice to the Place: Three Models for Understanding American Sacred Space Part 2: The Geography of American Spiritual Traditions Mythic Landscapes: The Ordinary as Mask for the Holy Chapter 3: Seeking a Sacred Center: Places and Themes in Native American Spirituality Mythic Landscapes: The Mountain That Was God Chapter 4: Baroque Spirituality in New Spain and New France Mythic Landscapes: The Desert Imagination of Edward Abbey Chapter 5: The Puritan Reading of the New England Landscape Mythic Landscapes: Galesville, Wisconsin: Locus Mirabilis Chapter 6: The Correspondence of Spiritual and Material Worlds in Shaker Spirituality Mythic Landscapes: Liminal Places in the Evangelical Revival Chapter 7: Precarity and Permanence: Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Sense of Place Part 3: Method and Perspective in Studying American Spirituality and Place Chapter 8: The Ephemeral Character of Place: Problems in Articulating an American Sense of Sacred Space Chapter 9: Edwards and the Spider as Symbol: Reflections on Spirituality as an Academic Discipline Chapter 10: The Imagined Landscape: The Tension between Place and Placelessness in Christian Spirituality Notes

Lane's vast array of case studies and allusions in analyzed by a fertile imagination that bounces between ethnolography, iconography, phenomenology, and poetics. A joy to read, this richly footnoted study is mind-boggling in its provocative assertion of the deep mysteries of place-bound identities. Choice This expanded edition of Lane's 1988 book benefits from over a decade of heightened scholarly interest in place and religion. -- Quincy D. Newell Religious Studies Review 2004 Both scholar and pilgrim, Belden Lane provides us a remarkably informed, reflective, personal account of Americans' sense of sacred space. Journal of Cultural Geography