When a church shuts down, or moves to a new location, is there any special ceremony required to ‘decomission’ the building?
How about when a new religion takes over the building? Is any special ceremony required there to ‘resanctify’ the building?
I’m sure any such ceremony would depend on the religion and the denomination of said religion.
I do know that, at least in most American cities, if a church is no longer going to be used as a church, it will have to be re-zoned by the city or county zoning commission to suit its new purpose. A friend of mine lives in a big old Episcopalian limestone church that was converted into a series of apartments.
They kept the huge stained glass rose window in the front, so all the front apartments have a piece of stained glass window in them. Pretty neat.
I know the Catholic church has such a procedure – “deconsecrate” or like term.
There was a big stink made in the 80’s when that famous sin-pit dance club, Limelight, opened in a refurbished NYC Catholic church. Everyone thought is was disgraceful and sacrilegous. But the church said, hey we deconsecrated (or whatever) the place, so it’s just another building at this point.