[cvoss]

You're kind of proving the point. The building is not the real thing, as any sense in which it is holy (which is a word that means set apart for a special purpose) can be readily undone. The church doesn't cease to exist when that happens. It moves. The same way the Tabernacle (the ancient Tabernacle) moved, which happened on a semi-regular basis. The place is less important than who is there.

[mock-possum]

It seems like this is confusing The Church with a church.

Notre Dame Cathedral is a church, but you could burn it to the ground tomorrow and it wouldn’t have hardly any impact at all on the persistence of The Church.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Such is claimed, but I suspect that this is a misleading truth. Christianity is an extremely successful religion, but if it were less popular and Notre Dame was one of only a few church buildings (even, just one of a few with that level of grandeur), then burning it to the ground would indeed have a profound impact on the persistence of The Church. For those religions with a single temple, the destruction of that building is more than merely traumatic, it is catastrophic. Christianity only avoids this by having so very many buildings, many of them as spectacular as Notre Dame.

[ForTheKidz]

Surely if the church was just the people such a ritual of consecration would have fallen by the wayside a long time ago.

Anyway, there are in fact many christians who view churches as sacred in themselves. Good luck painting christianity with any such a wide brush.

[DiggyJohnson]

The inclusion of the word “just” makes this comment not so relevant to the discussion. Nobody is claiming that.

[ForTheKidz]

I'm afraid i'm missing the point of the entire conversation, then. Nobody was claiming church was just a building to begin with either.