Places of Worship

The Gods of Greece resided on Mount Olympus, which Homer described thus: "Olympus, abode of the gods, that stand fast for ever. Neither is it shaken by winds nor wet with rain, nor does snow fall upon it, and the air is outspread clear and cloudless, and over it hovers a radiant whiteness." This reminds us of the Himalayan peak where Shiva and Parvati of Hindu lore reside. The gods could well be up above in the vast expanse of extra-terrestrial space, beyond the starry firmament. The ancient vision was that the Gods resided way too far for ordinary humans to climb and reach.

Because they are so distant every religion constructed halls and altars where the divine might come to reside, where men and women can gather to pay homage to the Almighty. Temples were built for Minerva and Jupiter on the hills of Rome.
The grand edifices built for them have crumbled down for archeological probes or they have been renovated to attract tourists. All man-made gods have a history.

In ancient India there were devalayas (Houses of Gods) for the Sun-God Surya and the Sky-God Indra, but now we have mandirs and koyils consecrated to Rama and Krishna, Shiva, Kali and Murugan.

In the Judaic tradition, the place of worship was also a place where people went together (synagog). It was in the synagogue that religious teachings were proclaimed to the faithful: i.e. the synagogue also served as a kind of public school for religious studies. The Jewish scholar Arthur Herzberg explains that "The central function of the synagogue was to cultivate a value perhaps more important that prayer to Jewish faith, the study of the Torah." On Sabbath, people gathered in the synagogue to hear a reading of a passage from the Torah and to gain understanding of its interpretation. To this day, this is enshrined in the central act of public worship in Judaism on every major occasion.

In the Christian world assemblies for common worship services became churches. When Paul and Peter initiated such groups, perhaps they did not realize that some day churches would spread to every corner of the world, just as, when the first temples were erected in India no one foresaw a day when there would be temples in Malaysia and Madagascar, in London and Pittsburgh.

Periodic calls to prayer through a hearty proclamation that God is great is an important feature in the worship centers of the Islamic world. Here the traditional mode is to prostrate as a gesture of surrender to the Almighty: which is why the place is called a masjid, which literally means a place for prostration. Known as mosque in English, it has a wall without doors with a niche called mihrab which points to the direction (qilba) of Maccah where the Prophet had established the very first mosque of the tradition. Then there are the stupas and the multi-layered pagodas of Buddhism. To these may also be attached residence halls for the monks of the tradition. The architectural elements of the building are also regarded as worthy of reverence. Though Buddha himself was indifferent to questions about God's existence, he has been symbolically deified in the tradition. Therefore his images are revered and worshiped in Buddhist temples. The gurudwara (Doorway to the Master) is the Sikh place of worship where the faith's scripture (Guru Granth Sahib) is all that is worshiped in reverence, and the One God is invoked as waheguru.

Places of worship are the sanctified centers one expresses gratitude to that which caused the world and humans to be. In such centers, the human spirit invokes in humility the magnificence of the Unfathomable Mystery that has actualized this world: This is a lofty goal of religions.