You couldn't make it up dept no.87: the sermon will not be televised

[fpb]

From www.floridatoday.com:
A church giving sermons about sex may have to find a new home. Brevard Public School District's risk-management department has threatened to boot New Hope Church out of Sherwood Elementary because of a worship series titled "Great Sex for You."

Church leaders mailed 25,000 fliers, asking residents "Is Your Sex Life A Bore?" The three-week program kicked off inside the school auditorium. Pastor Bruce Cadle had said the Christian church has been "shamefully silent" on the taboo topic.

Mark Langdorf, the director of risk management, says the mailers generated complaints, were not appropriate for elementary school children and shouldn't be used to advertise the sermon in the school.

Langdorf says the church's lease contract is under review.

Comments

[mentalguy.livejournal.com]

To say of someone who holds a different position to yours, that they do not have a true grasp of sacred space, or any other issue, is, in my mind at least, arrogant. They may well fully grasp the concepts and the ideas and have reached different conclusions.

On the basis of what he said, I don't think your former minister did grasp the concept. (Not that the fault lies with him in particular; it is something that goes back all the way to the Protestant Reformers.) But you do deserve an explanation of why I think so.

In one respect, the issue is much broader than Christianity specifically. At least in the West and near East, outside of Protestantism and movements descended from Protestantism (e.g. neopaganism), a sacred person or thing is one which is understood to belong to or be given to God (or a god, in pagan contexts) and is therefore set apart from common life. This sense is still reflected in some dictionaries, at least the ones I consulted online.

In a specifically Christian context, see for example the imposition of hands mentioned in the first and second letters to Timothy, or the various practices of the ancient Churches (not just the Catholic Church) which are called consecration. Of course there is also the consecration of Samuel in the Old Testament, and of the Temple, and so on.

The Reformation represented a break from that basic understanding of the sacred; no longer were objects blessed or priests or bishops consecrated with the laying on of hands in a line all the way to the Apostles; new church buildings were no longer consecrated. The break is not entirely absolute; some Protestant groups will still "dedicate" (but not consecrate) a building, just as most Protestants still bless food before they eat it. But as Luther put it, in his view three things made a church building: the assembly of Christians, the hearing of the Word, and the reception of the sacraments (as he understood them). That is, the building is set apart because of what Christians do there, not because it has been consecrated to God, as such. (Unsurprisingly, Luther also added a characteristically unnecessary caution that the building must not be approached as a medium salutis.)

At any rate, to be sacred means to belong specifically to God. Rejecting the possibility of such consecration by definition excludes an understanding of the sacred. This is reflected in the progressive loss in the Protestant world of even intuitive distinctions in this area, epitomized in the United States by the rise of megachurches which employ almost entirely secular and commercial forms.