Who Decides What's Sacred and Profane?

When someone told me that the greatest musicians and artists originated from the church, using their God-given talents for sacred purposes before eventually "abandoning their spiritual calling for worldly success," I couldn't shake one question: Who exactly gets to decide when art stops being sacred and becomes profane?

Think about it. Bach wrote his magnificent organ works for Lutheran worship—undeniably sacred music, right? But when a modern pianist performs the same piece in Carnegie Hall for a paying audience, has it somehow become profane? The notes haven't changed. The beauty hasn't diminished. Yet something fundamental seems different according to the gatekeepers.

This whole sacred-profane divide has been eating at me, and I think it's time we called bullshit on who's really pulling the strings here.

How Institutions Hijacked the Divine

Here's what I've come to understand: the whole sacred-profane distinction isn't about the art itself—it's about who has the power to define categories and why they benefit from keeping people in those boxes.

Religious institutions didn't just accidentally become arbiters of sacred and profane—they actively constructed this authority. They controlled artistic education for centuries, monopolized resources necessary for artistic development, and then claimed the right to define what constitutes appropriate use of these talents. Having trained artists and controlled their resources, they framed departure from religious contexts as moral failure rather than artistic evolution.

But who made the church the ultimate arbiter of sacred and profane?

The Economics Nobody Talks About

Let's talk about what nobody wants to acknowledge: money. Many artists who transitioned from religious to secular contexts did so because they could actually make a fucking living. Churches, while providing training and prestige, rarely offered financial sustainability.

When people frame this transition as "abandoning the sacred for the profane," they're essentially saying that artists should remain poor and institutionally dependent to maintain their spiritual authenticity. This perspective serves institutional interests more than artistic ones.

The narrative that artists who leave religious contexts are "selling out" obscures the reality that religious institutions often exploit artistic labor while subsidizing their own cultural influence.

Beyond Binary Thinking

But here's where it gets even more interesting: what if this entire sacred-profane framework is limiting our understanding of both spirituality and art?

People love categories. Sacred/profane, good/evil, spiritual/secular, high art/low art. These binaries give society the illusion of clarity but force people to make artificial choices and ignore the nuanced reality of human creative expression.

The story of artists "leaving the sacred for the profane" creates a false choice: spiritual authenticity vs. artistic freedom, service to God vs. service to humanity, pure motives vs. practical concerns. But these aren't actually opposites. Many artists find their deepest spiritual expression through secular work. Many discover that serving broader humanity is a form of serving the divine.

The Artist's Integrated Vision

What I've noticed is that the greatest artists throughout history refuse to accept artificial boundaries between sacred and profane. Bach wrote secular cantatas and religious passions with equal dedication. Coltrane found spiritual transcendence through jazz improvisation. When a gospel-trained singer moves to R&B, are they really becoming "profane," or are they bringing sacred elements into spaces that desperately need them?

Maybe the most sacred thing about art is its ability to transcend the very boundaries people try to impose on it.

Who Really Benefits?

Émile Durkheim showed that sacred and profane aren't inherent qualities but social constructions. Anything can become sacred when a community designates it as "set apart." This insight raises a troubling question: who gets to do the designating?

Feminist scholars have identified how sacred-profane distinctions often reinforce patriarchal power structures. When religious institutions claim authority over these definitions, they're claiming authority over marginalized voices. The "sacred" becomes whatever serves institutional power, while the "profane" includes anything that challenges it.

The Real Question

Those with institutional power decide what's sacred and profane, and they decide in ways that serve their interests. When religious institutions claim that artists who leave their contexts are choosing "profane" over "sacred," they're making a power claim, not a spiritual one.

Reclaiming Power

I believe the power to define sacred and profane ultimately belongs to communities of people who create, consume, and value art. Institutions can claim this authority, but they can't exercise it without consent.

Artists who move from religious to secular contexts might not be abandoning the sacred—they might be expanding it. They might be demonstrating that the sacred is bigger than any institution, more flexible than any doctrine, and more present than any official designation can contain.

The real profanity might not be leaving the church but limiting the sacred to institutional contexts.

The Bottom Line

The decision of what's sacred and what's profane ultimately rests with individuals and communities rather than institutions. The most sacred thing about art might be its capacity to challenge the very institutions that try to control it.

Because in the end, the question isn't who decides what's sacred and profane—it's whether society can evolve beyond needing these categories at all. The artists who inspire me most deeply usually transcend these boundaries. Maybe it's time the rest of us learned from their example.