Functioning as a local history database, the website provides a visual tour of sacred spaces through image galleries with descriptions of the spaces as they relate to Louisiana history. Hosted by Professor Lauren Horn Griffin, the podcast includes interviews with religious leaders, community members, and scholars as they describe the past and present of their spaces and their role in identity formation.
Interrogating the Sacred/Secular Binary
This project highlights how spaces we consider religious (by which we usually mean private or apolitical) are not and have never been separate from public life, calling into question binaries like church/state and public/private.
While the majority of recent conversations approach the sacred/secular divide through debates about “religious” artifacts in “secular” public spaces, this project examines the other side of the coin: how are ethnic, local, state, and national identity created through spaces usually considered religious? This project would not only shed light on how state and national (read: “secular”) histories are told in spaces considered sacred, but also the broader question of how ideas of sacred/secular are formed in the first place. In other words, it would challenge our ways of thinking about the conflict between religious and secular values in our world today, and open up the opportunity to think about how people conceive of themselves in local, national, and religious terms.
Participating in current conversations about monuments, collective memory, and the relationship between “religious” and “state” identity, this project hopes to make visible the categories we take for granted, investigating how they are formed, how they function, and how people conceive of themselves in local, national, and religious terms.
History, Local and National
Tapping into sacred spaces as living records of local history, Louisiana History in Sacred Spaces also offers a fresh approach to telling our state’s past— one that highlights the relevance of spaces we call sacred to current debates over religious, ethnic, state, and national identity. Delving deeper into the art and architecture we see everyday, we ask how these spaces shape the way people see themselves as citizens of Louisiana and the United States.
To hear more about the project and stay up to date on our latest podcast episode releases follow us on X, Instagram, and Blue Sky at histsacredspaces. For more information contact Lauren Horn Griffin at lhgriffin@lsu.edu.
This project is funded by a generous Rebirth Grant from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities.
This program is funded under a grant from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this website do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
