ABSTRACT
The background to my argument is provided by the location of this presentation in the centre of Munich, in the Amerika Haus, close to the Königsplatz. I want two comparisons to lie at the back of our minds. One comparison is between the ecology of sacred space in Munich and in Berlin, considered as rival poles in a federal country with two principal and numerically balanced versions of Christianity, covering some two-thirds of the population. The second comparison is between sacred space in Germany and the varied sacred spaces of the USA, another federal country with numerous versions of Christianity, but bound together by a common myth called by Harold Bloom The American Religion.1 That myth overlaps Robert Bellah’s Civil Religion but can be expressed in more directly theological terms.2
