Belden C. Lane is the Hotfelder Distinguished Professor in the Humanities in the Department of Theological Studies
at Saint Louis University.
Summary
This substantially expanded edition of Belden C. Lane's Landscapes of the Sacred includes a new introductory
chapter that offers three new interpretive models for understanding American sacred space. Lane maintains his approach
of interspersing shorter and more personal pieces among full-length essays that explore how Native American, early
French and Spanish, Puritan New England, and Catholic Worker traditions has each expressed the connection between
spirituality and place. A new section at the end of the book includes three chapters that address methodological
issues in the study of spirituality, the symbol-making process of religious experience, and the tension between
place and placelessness in Christian spirituality.
Table of Contents
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
