{"id":4053,"date":"2010-09-21T23:00:28","date_gmt":"2010-09-22T03:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/?p=4053"},"modified":"2010-09-21T23:00:28","modified_gmt":"2010-09-22T03:00:28","slug":"holy-holy-places-batman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/2010\/09\/holy-holy-places-batman\/","title":{"rendered":"Holy holy places, Batman!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We\u2019ve visited five places of worship in our time here: the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mandir.org\/\">Swaminarayan Mandir<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.centralsynagogue.org.uk\/\">Central Synagogue<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eastlondonmosque.org.uk\/\">East London Mosque<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stpauls.co.uk\/\">St. Paul\u2019s Cathedral<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.westminster-abbey.org\/\">Westminster Abbey<\/a>.  I include the Abbey with extreme hesitation, but ultimately do so because you have to pay if you visit like we did, but it\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.westminster-abbey.org\/faq\">free if you want to worship<\/a> (look under \u201centrance fees\u201d).  Let\u2019s break it down scientifically.<\/p>\n<p>Mandir, Mosque, and Synagogue:<\/p>\n<p>Confession (pun intended): before these three visits, I had never entered a non-Christian place of worship.  I wasn\u2019t sure what to expect, but generally found all three to be a pleasant experience.  Part of me wishes we were able to go to a smaller place of worship and see a mandir, mosque, or synagogue that was strictly for research.  But they probably would not be nearly as accommodating to a group of 27, and we also would have missed out on the community outreach we saw at the places that we went to.  Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism are very different religions (although not as different as accounts of \u201creligious\u201d warfare would have one believe).  One thing I saw that differentiated them as a group from the Christianity that I\u2019m more acquainted with, though was the emphasis on serving the local community.  In no way am I saying that these religions are more concerned with service than Christianity; all four religions are too massive to make generalizations like that.  I am saying, however, that the Catholic churches that I\u2019ve grown up with take collections for feeding and proselytizing faraway lands.  BAPS, the Central Synagogue, and the East London Mosque were all very concerned with their very local community of believers.<\/p>\n<p>St. Paul\u2019s &amp; Westminster:<\/p>\n<p>Borderline places of worship.  This did not devalue either place for me in the least; Westminster Abbey is just so mind-blowingly historic that I still haven\u2019t figured out a way to synthesize what I saw there.  And St. Paul\u2019s remains a spectacular triumph of architectural design.  Still, though, all I was able to pick up about Anglicanism in these two outings was through indirect encounters.  After being in these two places, my gut tells me that the Church of England has been culturalized, that it isn\u2019t about the faith.  But I really, really wish I went to a run-of-the-mill Anglican church on a Sunday morning.  Without having done that, I can\u2019t add anything to the numbers that anyone can read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We\u2019ve visited five places of worship in our time here: the Swaminarayan Mandir, Central Synagogue, East London Mosque, St. Paul\u2019s Cathedral, and Westminster Abbey. I include the Abbey with extreme hesitation, but ultimately do so because you have to pay if you visit like we did, but it\u2019s free if you want to worship (look [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":387,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6697,93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2010-dennis","category-churches-and-cathedrals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/387"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4053\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}