Interfaith worship spaces are buildings that are home to congregations representing two (or more) religions. Buildings shared by churches of two Christian denominations are common, but there are only a few known places where, for example, a Jewish congregation and a Christian congregation share their home.
Such buildings are of interest as concrete ventures in the interfaith understanding which many religious groups now espouse.
There are several cases in North America where a small congregation of one faith is a tenant in a building owned and chiefly occupied by a congregation of another faith.
Buildings that were planned and erected as joint projects include:
- Ann Arbor, Michigan, St. Clare of Assisi Episcopal church and Temple Beth Emeth share a building called Genesis of Ann Arbor.
- Waterloo, Ontario, Westminster United Church and Temple Shalom share The Cedars Worship and Community Centre.
- Columbia, Maryland, (a planned community originally developed by the Rouse Company), five Interfaith Centers have been built, the first in 1970, and another is planned.
- Derry, New Hampshire, The Church of the Transfiguration, Episcopal, and the Etz Hayim Synagogue began as a landlord/tenant relationship, but expanded in 2009 to become the Derry Interfaith Campus.
Famous quotes containing the words worship and/or spaces:
“You who were directionless, and thought it would solve everything if you found one,
What do you make of this? Just because a thing is immortal
Is that any reason to worship it? Death, after all, is immortal.
But you have gone into your houses and shut the doors, meaning
There can be no further discussion.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“We should read history as little critically as we consider the landscape, and be more interested by the atmospheric tints and various lights and shades which the intervening spaces create than by its groundwork and composition.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)