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I would go further and say fundamentalist Christianity has no concept of the sacred at all.
Back some time ago, I argued with Chip Berlet over whether or not fundamentalism was a completely modern impulse or was a resuscitation. I maintained it was an attempt to regain a lost way of life and was therefore a resuscitation. Now, I am arguing my way over to Chip's position. I was wrong and this loss of the sacred is a core part of that argument.
Even though I am a stone cold atheist, I do have a concept of what is sacred and Christian fundamentalists are from that perspective, completely profane. I would say their demeanor and almost everything about them is blasphemous. In effect they have destroyed a religious way of life. So in this sense they are a wholly modern social phenomenon. My mistake in thinking they were attempting to resurrect a religious life, was to assume they understood what such a life was, when it now seems to me, they couldn't possibly conceive such a life. There is something about the fundamentalist's apparently overwhelming need to dictate and proselytize that is entirely antithetical to what I consider a religious life. So in this sense then the Israeli government's presumption to represent Judaism, or the Islamic militant's jihad against the West, and our own home grown nasties, the Christian right, strike me as entirely secular as in devoid of any understanding of the sacred. They all give religious people a bad name.
Here is a thought experiment. Imagine walking into a bright new fundamentalist mega-church say in Houston or Los Angeles and sitting in a seat when the whole place was completely empty. I can't imagine offering a prayer in such a place. It would be an absurd gesture, mocked by say the bright green carpet, the absolutely white bare walls and echoing acoustics of a completely barren architecture. As a practical matter it would impossible to even get into one of these places when it was empty, since I am certain they are all well guarded with rent-a-cops who would no doubt hauled my ass off to the precinct jail without a second thought.
Now imagine walking into a old spanish colonial church in Mexico, cool and dark against the overwhelming heat and light of mid-day. I imagine my sight slowly getting used to the dark and seeing the paintings on the walls, the icons in the stain glass tinted gloom, the votive candles in their stands, or flickering in their glass cups, maybe one or two old women with scarfs inside silently kneeling in the old fashioned way with their rosaries. Would a prayer be a mockery in such a place? I don't think so. I might even feel compelled to offer one out of respect, despite my complete lack of belief.
I know exactly why there is such an impulse. It turns on the concept of architectural presence which was refined to a high art in Renaissance and the Baroque, when a few decades later the most famous of spanish colonial churches were built in Mexico. A very similar architectural style grew up in Sicily. And in the oldest centers of religious life in the Middle East, South Asia, China and Japan there are related architectural spaces, places of great devotion to the sacred that evoke related thoughts. Malraux discusses these kinds of ideas at length in The Metamorphosis of the Gods.
In any event, I am not sure you can do art at all without some sense for these things and how they are orchestrated to create a concept of the sacred. That in its most comprehensive sense was in my view almost the entirety of the craft of art. In short, you don't need symbols or icons to enter this realm. All you need is a sense of space and its ability to sculpt the mind.
CG