It talks about how the effort to block religious institutions from utilizing public school space (while still allowing other organizations to do so) has taken an interesting tack.  In New York City, what is banned is specifically a "religious worship service."  Why?  In so many words, because it transforms the space around it into sacred space.  Literally, a public space is being transformed - for the span of a worship service - into a different kind of building all together.

As I tend to find typical with Christianity Today, it's response to the situation seems somewhat lacking in theological depth.  It acknowledges that worship "does change the nature of a place."  It then justifies this position by asking whether or not we would be concerned by other religious services occurring in an area that we (or our children, in this case) would be moving about in after the fact.

The implied answer is, 'of course we would'.  Even I find myself agreeing at a certain instinctual level.  But what of this response?  Is it Biblical?  

The lectionary readings for the year are currently moving us through sections of 1 Corinthians, where Paul is addressing the issue of other religious activities going on around Christians and how anal they need to be about avoiding them.  Are we polluted by exposure to other religious spaces or practices - or in Paul's presenting issue, food that has been dedicated (potentially) to a false god?  Paul addresses this in chapters eight and ten, specifically.  

His basic argument is that we don't stress out about it, in terms of the reality of what is happening.  In other words, if someone else is fooled into thinking that there is another god, and they sacrifice food to that god before offering it for sale or serving it to their guests, it hasn't changed the quality of the food.  Food is food.  False gods are false gods.  It can't hurt us - and by extension, we ought not to be too squeamish about whatever strange ideas those around us like to carry around in their heads or stamp on their prime rib.  If my child fervently believes in dragons and wants to draw dragons on everything they own, I don't need to live in fear somehow of those dragons - or real versions of those creatures.  We are to have no other gods before God (the first commandment) because there are no other gods before him.  

If we think of this in terms of worship space, that means that if the Hindus hold a worship service in a room, the room remains a room.  It may smell different.  There may be the residue of ashes or incense or bits of food or whatever else was part of that worship service.  But the room remains unchanged.  Our unease with the room might be visceral, but it is based in a false fear of false gods.  The same with a Muslim prayer service, or a Wiccan service, or anything else.  Praying to false gods, worshiping false gods, offering sacrifices to false gods accomplishes nothing in terms of physical space.  

This is a separate issue from the realm of the demonic, however.  And while I believe that the demonic and false gods often intersect, I'm going to - at 7:30am on a Friday - say that there is a qualitative difference between offering worship or sacrifice or prayer to a false god that may at one time have been a demon, and the active effort to worship a demon or Satan himself.  There are spiritual aspects at play in the world and we want to be respectful of that.  But we also need to trust very firmly in the victory of Jesus Christ over those powers.  If a particular space is dedicated to the exclusive use of demon-worship, there may be cause for concern and caution in entering that space.  

Why is that?  

Because in Scripture, we see the story of overlapping worlds, as it were (and I'm influenced at the moment by N.T. Wright's way of explaining this in his book Simply Christian, which I'm just about finished with).  Heaven and earth are neither synonymous nor separated by vast distances, as pantheism/panentheism and deism respectively assert.  Rather, heaven and earth are separate, but very close together.  The work of God the Father through God the Son results in faith brought by God the Holy Spirit that these worlds are being brought back together, and that at certain times and in certain places, there is overlap, the curtain parts, and the two are effectively one.

One such place and time is Christian worship.  Christian worship accomplishes something that no other religion can do in it's worship service - it can not simply testify to the truth, it can become embodied of it.  Christians in worship don't simply talk about the worship of God with all the saints, we participate in it.  The reality we attempt to describe is really real, and therefore our worship does change the nature of a space - at least for a span of time.  It becomes a place where heaven and earth are joined.  No other religion can accomplish that in their worship or sacrifice, because no other religion describes Truth.  They are aiming at other targets (though they don't know that), and so they can never strike the bullseye in worship.

Going back briefly to the issue of demon/Satan worship, I'm wondering if it could be accurate to describe satanic worship services as a place and time where hell and earth intersect.  If Christian worship is heaven on earth (or earth in heaven, or whatever the best way to describe it is), then is satanic worship hell on earth, or earth in hell?  Possibly.  Again, because demonic/Satanic worship is aiming at a truth.  A horrible, terrible truth, but a truth all the same.  These powers exist and are being rightly worshiped for their own nature (not a false or assumed nature, like a demon impersonating a divine entity).  

So, going way back to the article at hand, there is a fundamental difference between Christian worship and any other kind of worship, and that difference is indicative of a transformation of space into a sacred realm.  It is a place where heaven and earth are united for the span of worship, and that change is actual, even if it isn't something that can be measured or observed.  In the same way, the false worship of another religious tradition in the same space doesn't accomplish the same change.  The school district isn't concerned with this distinction - it just wants to prevent worship of any kind.  But Christians should be aware of this distinction so that we, as with Paul's readers in Corinth, might be strengthened in our faith and trust in Jesus Christ.