I read in a recent issue of Architectural Digest that a church in Detroit has been “de-consecrated” and turned into a Fine Arts Center in a new arts district of the city. I had never seen that word before, though I hear it’s been happening in other places.
That made me wonder how, exactly, does one “de-consecrate” a place of worship. Does a community have a de-consecration ceremony in which art enthusiasts actually form a public procession to carry out from a formerly consecrated space, the art, the cross, icons, golden candlesticks, offering plates, hymnals, choir robes, and communion chalices?
Do the re-constructionists remove the anchors from the altar, the communion table, and the pulpit and join the procession, moving this dedicated furniture out into a newly secularized parking lot to be auctioned off to the highest bidder?
And once the artifacts of worship have been removed, is there a vacuum to suck out the sacred? In the de-spiritualizing process, does some holy dust stay floating in the sunbeams streaming through the stained-glass windows to settle on the newly introduced secular art? Does some of it flow out through the wide-open doors and, in spite of everything, does some righteous residue fall on the children playing in the neighborhood or the homeless sleeping on park benches in the nearby park?
Or do the molecules of breath, breathed over decades of prayer, stay, as do water and matter, only just changing form and remaining forever? Could the congregants who have dedicated their babies, exchanged wedding vows, confessed their sins and found forgiveness and salvation, sung, rejoiced, and mourned there take a box of consecration with them down the street and release it into some empty storefront space to consecrate into something sacred?
Do the de-consecrated pews that end up on the front porch of some Cracker Barrel still carry the spirit of the holy in the wood that was seasoned by the atmosphere of supplication and praise still whisper “holy, holy, holy” to those who sit there waiting for a table inside?
And that makes me wonder if there are architecturally beautiful buildings that still bear the sign outside but are slowly being “de-consecrated” by the people who still gather there for “church” but are detached from the Lord they once worshipped in that place.
Maybe, on the other hand, it’s time to carry our dedicated pews and communion tables and altars and pulpits to the town green or city squares or prisons or youth centers, and change these pieces of furniture and artifacts and symbols into the actual eucharist and communion, living sermons and places of prayer our Lord intended them to be.
