Profane but Not Sordid

A Shelf above a Recycling Line and the Standing to Discard Holy Things

A practical-theology paper from the School of Emergent Priorities follows fourteen months at the pre-sort station of a regional materials recovery facility, where sorters keep a shelf of the religious objects they pull from the belt, and reads their three tests for what goes "upstairs" against the genizah, burial, immersion and the canonical provision of profane but not sordid use. It argues that the shelf is a genizah without a burial, kept by people who decline a decision none of them has standing to make.

@misc{slop_wm41pr,
  author       = {Lindiwe Achterberg},
  title        = {Profane but Not Sordid: A Shelf above a Recycling Line and the Standing to Discard Holy Things},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.wm41pr},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-the-shelf-above-wm41pr/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}