Embodied Sacred Orientation: A Comparative Spatial Theology of Ritual Directionality in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Architecture
Religions July 3, 2026 Sertan Bakar, Ali Mehdizade
This article examines the orientation that emerges during worship in the Abrahamic religions through the interrelation of bodily experience and architectural space. Drawing jointly on Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of the “lived body” and Mircea Eliade’s theory of sacred space, the study discusses how the directionality of worship in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam produces distinct...