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:
“Oh! thou clear spirit of clear fire, whom on these seas I as Persian once did worship, till in the sacramental act so burned by thee, that to this hour I bear the scar; I now know thee, thou clear spirit, and I now know that thy right worship is defiance. To neither love nor reverence wilt thou be kind; and e’en for hate thou canst but kill; and all are killed. No fearless fool now fronts thee.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“through the spaces of the dark
Midnight shakes the memory
As a madman shakes a dead geranium.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)