“The Parish Must Be Where The People Are”
A Study of a Parish Shopping-centre Project, Viewed as Communication
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/imre.v15i3.289Keywords:
shopping centre chapel, sacred space, sacred architecture, communicationAbstract
During the last decades religiosity in Western countries has both decreased in its public forms and increased in the form of individuals’ interest in spiritual matters. Having a connection with members is challenging, even if crucially central, to all religious communities. This was the aim of the development project of the Olari parish, conducted in the Iso Omena shopping centre in Finland. This article investigates this entire shopping centre project from the perspective of communication: what was the message that the parish wanted to send out to people, and what messages did the people receive? The theoretical framework of the article includes the perspective of communication as a multifaceted and process-natured phenomenon. The data includes 418 interviews. The discussion on the findings includes both theoretical and practical conclusions.References
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