Costruzione ed esperienza contemporanea del sacro. Personalizzazione, comunità elettive e comunità territoriali

How does sacred space structure around religious groups? How do the faithful search and establish these spaces? What are the characteristics which mark these spaces in relation with the territory? Religious experience is often grounded on community as the dimension of encounter, prayer, and. as in the case of monasteries of life. This article starts from a double track in con¬temporary religious experience in Christianity, which leans on a double spatial system. On one hand there is a homogeneous weave, made of parishes, locations of territorial communities experienced as places where it is possible to access a service. On the other hand, there is a polar system made up of diversified places such as monasteries, ecumenical centres, base communities, which are surrounded by liquid communities joined together by common interests and feel¬ings. Looking at these double geographies, we would suggest a phenomenologi¬cal approach focused on the new relations between religious experience and its spaces, mapping its contemporary transformations. The building of sacred space and its relation to elective and territorial communities represent the grounds for a discussion on an interpretative system of macro and micro geographies of the sacred, oriented toward a projectual re-reading of contemporary spaces.