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Monuments and Memorials

Collective memory places itself on Minnesota’s religious landscape. What we choose to remember and how we concretize those memories in places via monuments and memorials can reveal core values and commitments we share -- what matters to us together – and can also reveal through contestation and disagreement what divides us. In both respects, memorials and monuments can be said to be sacred: places of sacred beginnings or sacred events, or places consecrated by tragedy and trauma and loss. Such places can be overtly religious; they can also be sacred in less institutional ways. Nonetheless where the sacred is, or where the threat of desecration presents itself – these are places of interest to students of religions in Minnesota.