The Strangest Places of Religions

No one has any intention of creating a strange place. It just happens. The oldest rock garden in Japan is overgrown with moss, trees suddenly prove to have healing powers, and churches have to be hidden from persecutors. Johann Hinrich Claussen describes 39 Christian and non-Christian places, amazing, frightening or funny as they may seem and yet they deserve our respect.

"Shan-ti... ooooooooooooooom!" Where the holy rivers Ganges and Yamuna meet the invisible river Sarasvati is the navel of the world. Whoever bathes in this "honey of immortality" at the right time can be redeemed. But beware: 100 million pilgrims want to do the same at the same time. In the Congo, after a lonely journey on gravel roads, one reaches the heavenly Jerusalem: a huge temple with 37,000 seats. Just as remote is the sanctuary of Difunta Correa, where truck drivers offer V-belts, rims and whole trucks. Johann Hinrich Claussen invites us on an entertaining world tour into another dimension. Whether animal cemetery or rat temple, cathedral made of garbage or hermitage made of world war debris, place of survival or place of death, in the desert or right next door: the strangest places of the religions let us discover reasons and abysses of human existence:

The burial cave of the patriarchs

The porcelain church in Meissen

The mountain of nocturnal prayers

The mausoleum of the postman

The temple of the infinite green

The druid tree of Herchies

Highway City of Faith

A doll's cupboard for Jesus

The holy rats of Deshnok

Where you can buy eternal life