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Today I read in a LARP post-action report that they did some scenes in a chapel, which the writer pointed out was 'not real-life consecrated'.

This caused some cognitive dissonance, because I realise I've never really got the whole 'consecrating space' thing (in the real world). My upbringing contained churches meeting in pubs and school halls (as well as the more conventional variety), and in most cases the ones that met in the pubs and the school halls seemed at least just as, if not more, 'real' and attended by the real presence of God as the ones that I suppose must have been in 'consecrated' spaces. I've always been pretty attached to the whole 'where two or three gather' thing, with a pretty big dose of 'always with you' to go with it.

I'm especially not sure why it would be particularly Not Okay to play pretend in a consecrated space as opposed to a non-consecrated space usually used for approximately the same things...

I can understand the decor and the history making a place feel / be particularly 'holy', but I've never really given much thought to the 'mechanics' of consecrating places. I'm not even really sure what that _means_, in physical terms, for - say - a standard Anglican parish church; what do they _do_ that makes it 'consecrated'? I mean, I imagine like basically everything else it is the intent that is the most important part? But I just don't know :).

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Do you believe in blessing things / people? Eg what do you think a CoE vicar is doing when he blesses people at the end of a church service? Do you have a model of the eucharist where the bread and wine are 'made holier / different' in any ways? How do you feel about the bits in the old testament, eg where Moses is told to take off his shoes because he stands on holy ground, or where God says only certain people are allowed in certain bits of the temple?

Google seems to have some fair descriptions of christian consecration

CofE:
http://portsmouth.anglican.org/information/liturgy/consecration_and_dedication_of_a_building/

Catholic:
http://www.liturgyoffice.org.uk/Resources/Rites/RDCA.pdf

I believe in blessing things / people in the sense of 'asking for these things / people to be protected / do stuff better'; I'm not convinced that I think blessing things in the sense of 'I have now done a thing to this cup so it is a Special Cup' has any particular value. AFAICT the benediction at the end of the service is pretty obviously 'God, pls look after these people as they head out of here', not 'these people are now special people in a way they wouldn't have been if I hadn't done this ceremony'.

I understand the 'immediate' bits of the blessing of the eucharist making the bread and wine 'special', which is I guess somewhat contradictory with my scepticism about longer-term blessing of inanimate objects just to be generically 'special'; again, it's blessing them for a specific purpose, though, even if that purpose is 'make these things into a better representation of Jesus' body and blood'.

I guess consecration might also be blessing the place for a particular purpose in that way - but the longer-term the 'specialness' is meant to hang around, the less... relevant?... it seems to me?

So Moses' holy ground thing makes perfect sense because this is a temporary Holy Zone that has just been made so; similarly the church in the middle of a service after the presence of the Spirit has been invited, or any area that has been spiritually prepared _for this ritual what is happening now_, makes sense to me.

The Temple thing is a bit closer to the consecration of church buildings, but I got the impression that the Temple was much more of an always-active, 24-hour-manned thing than most churches - so I guess I'd understand a consecrated area in say a monastery, where people are actively maintaining it pretty much constantly, but once all the people have abandoned the area it just feels to me like there's nothing to hold the 'blessing' _together_?

"once all the people have abandoned the area it just feels to me like there's nothing to hold the 'blessing' _together_"

There's God.

I guess I have quite an anthropocentral view of the world - so while yes, there's God, I'm not sure why He would care about holding the specialness in the place once the people have dispersed... the things we are told about God's presence seem to be a mix of 'everywhere' and 'where people are'.

Because the people asked him to, in some way that speaks to him directly, and once God has put his mark somewhere it is Eternal?

This doesn't seem to be the paradigm that the concept of consecrating a building is working under, though; churches are decommissioned all the time...

But that again requires a ritual in which requests are made of God to remove his mark.

I get the temple, not because of a manning question, but because God choose to make that building the meeting point between God and man and put his presence in it in a sense which wasn't true of anywhere else on earth.

I think consecration of church buildings is a sort of reverse anachronism - an act carried out by people who haven't realised that the old covenant is over and the building their meeting in isn't the temple.

I'm not so sure the blessing at the end of the service is so obviously purely a 'look after these people' rather than a 'these people are now special': I certainly know some Christians who would feel they'd missed something if they weren't blessed that couldn't just be made up for with a prayer. There are parts of the Bible where blessings clearly have a lot more significance than a normal prayer - Isaac and Jacob/Esau comes to mind. Of course, a lot would have to depend on the intent of the blesser and receiver - I'm not saying it would be the same for every blessing or in every church.

On the keeping ground holy for a long time, I'm not sure why God (if He exists) couldn't make a piece of ground holy for a long period as well as a short period, if He decided to answer a prayer to make it holy. Then, once it had been made holy, it would be wrong to act in certain ways in that area, simply because it had been made holy. The fact that it was in some sense an arbitrary sense to make it holy wouldn't alter the rules of behaviour once it had been made holy. An analogy (in my mind) would be the way there's no obligation to give up chocolates for Lent, but if you promise God to do so, you then shouldn't eat them - despite the fact that if you'd never made the promise, it would be perfectly OK.

The irony is that you've posted this as a result of a LARP/role-playing report, as in a game context what 'consecrated' means would be very obvious and probably boil down to a number of modifiers!

For me, a space is consecrated by the gathering of people to worship there ("Whenever two or three of you..."), and is no longer consecrated when they are not there. I no longer believe in holy objects, although once I did.

I'd be more uncomfortable using a chapel for LARP or drama for the reason that I might make other people unhappy than that I'd be unhappy, being convinced that (as it were) God is not mocked.

I guess the point is that even while you don't believe it matters, there are people who do consider there to be special rules that apply to "consecrated spaces". The writer above was trying to reassure them that he didn't break those rules.

From what you've commented above, you don't believe in transubstantiation, but you'd be in a world of trouble if you did almost anything to a consecrated host in a Catholic church, because they do. Hence a girl got suspended in my school for taking communion, concealing it, and throwing it in a bin. Doesn't make much sense unless you realise that to them it was a bit of God.

In the same vein, all the churches in Italy which are touristy have dress codes and some have people there to shush you if you're too loud. That felt very weird when we were in the Pantheon, which is an intact Roman temple that was made into a church, but when in Rome(an Catholic Churches)....

I've always understood consecration as marking off a bit of space or landscape as primarily for the purpose of worship/carrying out Religion, which puts restrictions on what behaviour is acceptable there which would be totally unfeasible if they were to extend to all places that people might go - primarily because carrying out life involves a lot of time where you aren't actually primarily thinking about God and worshipping, eg: when asleep, or working, or talking to other people, or having sex, or finding food, or wondering if that itch is an insect bite and who that cat you often see in your garden belongs to.
So the idea is that it focuses the mind - if you go into the consecrated space you, and everyone else there, can only be there for the purpose of promoting Religion (probably worshipping, but maybe maintaining the space too), and that has benefits when combined with the way that some people think and also just practical benefits because there should be fewer potential distractions away from Religion whilst in that area, as there wont be people at the next table talking about the football, and you wont suddenly realise that you left out a mouldy mug where some of your prayer group can probably see it, etc etc.

......also....it is similar to why you might have dedicated periods of time marked off for Doing Religion even though you can actually Do Religion at any time - just with physical space.

Edited 2012-06-19 13:55 (UTC)

(Also, the comment above from a random ip was me, I just replied then realised I'm not logged in)

Further to the above, with regard to LARPing in consecrated spaces - quite a lot of larps involve the characters doing things that break the 10 commandments (such as worshipping other gods and murder, particularly) or would otherwise be seen as a bit insensitive to Christianity (eg: blood sacrifices to demons, etc), so that might also be a factor in making LARPing in a consecrated space even worse than just getting distracted during a long sermon and thinking about your social life instead - because people would be in the dedicated space actively doing things that are the opposite of the purpose.

Edited 2012-06-19 13:51 (UTC)

The difference being drawn was between a chapel that was consecrated and a chapel that wasn't consecrated, however, not a chapel and a non-chapel; I'd generally assume that a chapel that hadn't been through a particular group's formal consecration process was still a set-aside place...

Apparently not, as it appears that you can hold a larp there?
(I agree that it is probably more complicated than that and suspect you also get slightly different answers depending which flavour of church you'd ask)

Edit: http://www.peterboroughdiocesanregistry.co.uk/consecration.html appears to sugges that "consecrated" means "under the jurisdiction of a Bishop" - so that might explain why many traditional churches are consecrated but not all places of Christian worship.

Edited 2012-06-19 18:18 (UTC)

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