The Middle Way of Multifaith

Abstract

During the twenty-first century multifaith spaces (MFS) have spread across the Western world. They represent a new type of sacred space, where events belonging to different faiths, or no faith, share space. One of the strange things about them is that they appear to be a spontaneous phenomenon with no organization promoting or setting standards for them. This deserves an explanation. We observe that shared spaces hosting Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism, such as Three Sages Shrines, have a long history in China, and that multifaith spaces do not seem so incongruous there as they do in the West where syncretism is problematic. In a culture that values balance over truth and mixes humanism and religion, multifaith seems normal. Seeing Chinese sacred space and MFS as following convergent paths might suggest new ways of understanding and designing what are usually banal spaces.