Rite and Stone: Religious Belonging and Urban Space in Global Perspective

Abstract

Over long periods, interdisciplinary debates in urban studies on the relationships between religion and urban space were influenced by mainstream versions of modernization theory. These were based on the binary of urban modernity and nonurban (religious) tradition. However, historical urban research has shown that cities were also more often sites of religious innovation. Inspired by Jennifer Robinson’s understanding of cities as “ordinary” sites of sociality, with this special issue we contribute to this vibrant debate on religion and urbanism. The articles in it examine the role of places of worship as spatial and urban projects and address the following questions: How do religious actors become spatial entrepreneurs whose spatial projects shape cities? Which religiously motivated social and material forms emerge in cities? What are the practices and regimes that contribute to the spatialization of religion? How does the nature of places of worship alter and adapt to rapidly changing urban environments? And what are the consequences of religious buildings and other material forms for the social reality of cities? We argue that in contrast to former periods, when religious buildings were considered and constructed as authoritative buildings, these buildings are now much more fluid. Broad social transformations profoundly changed the roles played by and the social meanings attributed to them. Religious buildings and informal religious sites are not mere static architectural structures but bring with them a wide variety of spatial, economic, political, affective, and spiritual investments which make their construction, presence, and transformation a slippery object for urban planning logics and experts.

Introduction

Following the spatial turn in the social sciences, there has been an increasing interest in the multiple and mutually constitutive relationships between religion and space. Most of the studies in this area have been concerned with the globalization and transnationalization of religious groups (Beyer, 1994; Levitt, 2003; Van Der Veer, 2002), or—often in a more historical and theoretical perspective—the construction of sacred spaces (Chidester & Linenthal, 1995; Knott, 2010; Tweed, 2009). However, more recently, scholars have also begun to explore in greater detail not just how urban contexts are structural forces that encourage particular forms of religious belonging while discouraging others, but also how religious groups shape urban dynamics and processes of urban transformation.

With this special issue we contribute to this vibrant debate on religion and urbanism. As an interdisciplinary group of researchers including urban geographers, anthropologists, sociologists, and religious studies scholars, we do so by conceptualizing religious actors as spatial entrepreneurs ¹ who engage in a variety of spatial projects seeking not just to increase their material and symbolic presence and public visibility, but also to sacralize urban space in line with their particular religious aspirations. Our interest revolves around the role of places of worship as spatial and urban projects that enact and materialize religious ideologies and communities. As spatial entrepreneurs, however, religious groups compete with multiple other urban actors while their spatial strategies and their abilities to articulate their architectural and urban visions are subjected to changing political and urban planning regimes (Becci et al., 2017).

Previous research in this field has framed places of worship as points of intersection that reveal both the spatial strategies of religious groups as well as the forms of urban governance and power relations that shape and constrain them (Astor, 2012; Germain & Gagnon, 2003). We depart from these studies to explore, in a long-term perspective, how contestations and negotiations around the visibility of religious sites, especially those of minority religions, have transformed practices of religious space-making in urban contexts.

This special issue pushes the debate forward by putting the divergent material and political conditions under which religious places and spaces emerge and are transformed into a comparative perspective. On one hand, in earlier historical periods and partly in the present, religious buildings were considered and constructed as authoritative buildings that usually represented not only the religious power but often its liaison with political powers (the co-presence of state and religious buildings in the same square of a city is an illustration of it). On the other hand, religious places have become more fluid and diversified. Broad social transformations—especially the functional differentiation of social spheres, massive urbanization processes that produce shortages of urban space, the flexibilization of land uses, increasing real estate prices and gentrification that make land purchase an unaffordable option for many, the precarization of labor markets and subsequent economic instabilities of many religious groups—we argue, profoundly changed the roles played by and the social meanings attributed to religious buildings.

Departing from this general framework, the contributions to this special issue address the following questions: How do religious actors become spatial entrepreneurs and how do their spatial projects shape cities in particular ways? Which religiously motivated material forms emerge in cities and how do they relate to broader urban transformations? What are the practices and regimes that shape the spatialization of religion? What are the consequences of religious buildings and other material forms for the social reality of cities? How does the nature of places of worship alter and adapt to rapidly changing urban environments?

Perspectives on Religion and Urban Space

The intersections of religion and urban space have been studied from the vantage points of urban studies, religious studies (Knott, 2005), as well as the geography (Kong, 2001) and sociology of religion (Hervieu-Léger, 2002). These scholarly debates on religious urbanism have been influenced by mainstream versions of modernization theory based as they were on the paradigmatic binary of urban modernity and nonurban (religious) tradition (see also Berking et al., 2018, p. 6; Burchardt & Becci, 2013) and sought to move beyond their limitations. Although classical urban studies described metropoles such as Paris and Chicago as paradigmatic sites of modernity where religion was declining, historical urban research has shown that cities were also more often loci of religious innovation (McLeod, 2005). Seeking to draw on and further develop a concept of the city that accounts for this situation, we are inspired by Jennifer Robinson’s (2005) call to avoid the classical and often Eurocentric categorizations of cities that have been inspired by modernization theories. Instead, we understand cities as “ordinary” sites of sociality, which enmesh global influences and local cultures thereby producing new spaces and social forms. Robinson (2005) argues that urban theory should proceed from the comparison of cities that start from this premise of “ordinariness.”

Against the background of deep transformations of urban landscapes, including migration-related religious diversification, rapid urban change, the secularization of large parts of society, and various forms of religious change, such as the growth of Pentecostalism and Salafism, most scholars have focused on issues related to the visibility of minority religious groups in contested urban spaces (Burchardt et al., 2018; Griera & Burchardt, 2021). One main line of research has examined the construction of places of worship of religious minorities, in particular mosques, as sites of both recognition and visibility as well as conflict and contestation (Astor, 2012; Chiodelli & Moroni, 2017; Conti, 2016; Kuppinger, 2014).

Similarly, scholars in the debate on urban religion, including ourselves, have argued that next to buildings, ritual performances in urban spaces reflect both the rapid diversification of urban populations and the contested nature of urban spaces and the struggles for recognition of minority identities. Kong’s (2005) analysis of Thaipusam processions in Singapore, Garbin’s (2012) work on religious marches in the streets of London, and Saint-Blancat and Cancellieri’s (2014) analysis of a Filipino Catholic procession in Padua show the political significance of the temporary appropriation of urban spaces by diasporic and minority religious expressions. More recently, our edited volume Urban Religious Events: Public Spirituality in Contested Spaces (Bramadat et al., 2021), resulting from the same workshop (Understanding Urban Religion) as this special issue, analyzes forms of visibility of urban religious and spiritual belonging. In that volume we argue that urban religious events are a key vantage point to examine contemporary transformations of religious landscapes and explore the interplay between religious, political, and cultural dynamics in urban contexts.

Religious Urbanism: Shifting the Terms of the Debate

Drawing on the insights from the literature above but going beyond its rather presentist gaze, in this special issue, we focus on the nexus of religious spaces and urbanism from a broader historical perspective. Our aim is to show the historical complexity as well as the multiple factors that shape the intersection between urban contexts and the religious field.

Some of the articles explore the complex and historically changing relationships between urban planning and religious places and the ways planning logics eclipse some religious material forms while fostering others. In her article, Uta Karstein focuses on 19th-century English and German cities to examine urbanization processes and the attempts of churches to establish their places in urban areas. Similar to contemporary dynamics, material presence and symbolizations of urban space were major concerns for religious actors who sought to dominate urban landscapes through iconic buildings. At the same time, such buildings were supposed to reinforce the ties between urban dwellers, especially the working classes, and the churches, that urbanization processes had undercut.

Irene Becci and Johann Ev. Hafner, in turn, examine the role religious buildings play in city life even when they are no longer used for religious services. Their analysis of the construction of a synagogue, a mosque, and a church in the postsocialist German city of Potsdam shows that controversies and debates emerge at different levels and for different reasons. The historical presence of Christianity in the country and its political legacies, the history of the Shoah, the religious–secular divide before the reunification and the current fear of anti-Muslim sentiments shape the ways how urban inhabitants and their administrations understand and handle the projects to build new religious buildings differently.

In her article, Ursula Rao explores how small, informal, wayside shrines that are framed by participants as expressions of divine self-manifestation at ordinary places, such as at road crossings, in parks, or the re-creational spaces of neighborhoods in urban India, problematize planning logics. As forms of what Rao calls “unplanned urbanity,” these shrines routinely obstruct traffic and become sources of conflict among different groups of residents. While urban planners and designers therefore view them with suspicion, worshippers insist on their sacred nature and the divine agency behind them. Planning, designing and religion thus create divergent geographies of practices in which emerging spatial forms reveal both compromises as well as cultural and political hierarchies.

While in India formal planning and informal religious sites are routinely at odds, infrastructural planning may also trouble historical and deeply embedded places of worship. In her contribution, Leilah Vevaina explores the complex negotiations between urban authorities in Mumbai and the Parsi community over the construction of a new subway line that is supposed to pass underneath an ancient and highly sacred Parsi temple. Vevaina follows the intricate controversies over the legitimacy of religious and planning claims on urban space through public discourses and courts of law. Doing so, she pinpoints the dilemmas that arise for courts when adjudicating such claims, made in the name of variously defined majorities and minorities, on space.

Political economy and Marxist approaches to space such as those of Henry Lefebvre (1974) or David Harvey (1981) suggest that within capitalist relations of production and consumption spaces become commodities, allowing temporary crises of capitalism to be “fixed” via investments in real estate. Together with the cultural revalorizations of urban spaces, including their aesthetic features, across the world such spatial fixes have triggered processes of gentrification. As the articles by Linda van de Kamp and Weishan Huang demonstrate, urban religious life is strongly affected by gentrification. One major transformation, observed in several articles, has to do with urban property regimes. Because of increasing land prices and greater levels of people’s spatial mobility, religious sites are often no longer the property of religious organizations but located in rented facilities. In addition, many such buildings are no longer used only for one purpose: they serve as a factory one week and the week after as a church, and then as a gym.

Significantly, religious communities are not merely passive victims of gentrification but implicated in it in complex ways. Linda van de Kamp’s article is a good example of this. In it, the author shows how transnational Pentecostal churches engage with urban spaces within the broader context of urban renewal and gentrification. More specifically, she examines how Christian churches create places in a postindustrial area in Amsterdam showing that, next to economic and political actors, religious actors are urban entrepreneurs who contribute to the refashioning of decaying spaces, such as industrial ruins. In parallel, van de Kamp also shows how historical Christian churches are rearranged to meet the population’s needs and become spaces with a wider variety of uses beyond the strictly ritual or ceremonial. In the case of the Amsterdam area she studies, one of the church buildings has been transformed into a community center where services such as foodbanks are hosted.

The bidirectional relation between gentrification and religious communities and their buildings is a widespread phenomenon, which Weishan Huang examines in her article on Shanghai’s city center. In her contribution, Huang analyzes how the transformation of formerly residential areas into commercial areas has impacted religious communities and how these, in turn, like the ones in van de Kamp’s example, also often (unwittingly) become agents of urban renewal. Moreover, she shows how Buddhist temples adapt to the profound urban transformation by extending their membership beyond people linked to their immediate neighborhoods. Therefore, the break of the historical link between temple and neighborhood population forces religious communities to rearrange their authority structures and activities to match the context and the interests of their members, something the author calls “niche-switching.”

A very different form of gentrification and urban development has been on the rise in urban West Africa, especially in Nigeria, where wealthy Pentecostal churches have begun to transform urban spaces by building massive auditoriums and even the infrastructure, for example, bridges, needed to manage the traffic surrounding them. In his analysis of these processes, Katsaura explores the emergence of a new type of iconic Pentecostal architecture, an architecture that is meant to augment symbolic power and capital and that is, at the same time, a product of Pentecostal charisma, power and prestige, its material accumulation, so to speak.

In many of the dynamics sketched above, parallel, and often contradictory processes of the formalization and informalization of spaces are at work. Such contradictions are especially visible in the articles by Oosterbaan and Burchardt who draw attention to the material and spatial forms to which the extraordinary rise of charismatic Christianity in Latin America and Africa has given rise, as well as their aesthetic regimes. Focusing on the case of urban Brazil, and analyzing dynamics of “autoconstruction” in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas, Oosterbaan finds an elective affinity between the Pentecostal project of individual self-fashioning and the autoconstruction of houses and churches in marginalized urban spaces. Both processes demand the enactment of particular disciplinary regimes, as well as encode specific visions of success and urban visibility.

While these Brazilian Pentecostals go about their architectural and spatial practices, albeit with different levels of political and material capital, Burchardt’s article shows just how precarious and inchoate the outcomes of urban place-making in which Pentecostal Christians engage can be. Burchardt begins with the observation that many of the small charismatic communities in Cape Town’s townships not only lack the means to establish durable places of worship but that their urban environment, replete with high levels of crime, unemployment, and hyper-mobility, prevents, or at least, discourages, long-term development. Both, place-making—as the accreting of affective attachments to places—and architecture—as the planning and embellishing of human habitats—remain elusive modes of enacting urban religion. What allows people to organize religious community life in such contexts is the tinkering of infrastructures; instead, what turns certain sites into places of worship is people’s ability to provide access to electricity, water, and building materials so as to amplify the pastor’s voice via microphone, anoint people with water, and find shelter from the wind. The production of these infrastructures draws religious life into the profane realm of ordinary urbanism.

Given the fluid nature of many religious places, which appear and disappear quite quickly, and which do not always conform to historically recognizable religious architectural structures, city administrations often struggle to achieve a clear picture of the religious landscape. In their article on religious mapping projects, Mar Griera, Tobias Müller, and Julia Martínez-Ariño offer an account of how different cities try to pin down this diversifying reality through the creation of religious maps. Based on research on Barcelona, Hamburg, and Amsterdam, they show not only how these mapping projects try to crystalize what is otherwise a changing landscape of religious places of worship, but such efforts do so by following rather rigid classification categories that reproduce normative understandings of religious diversity. These classifications reflect particular understandings of religion influenced by the histories of migration of each context and their church-state regimes as well as broader philosophies of immigrant integration.

Overall, the contributions to this special issue show the complex and sometimes complicated interactions between urban planning and urban spaces, on one hand, and the entrepreneurial projects of religious actors, on the other hand. Religious buildings and informal religious sites are not mere static architectural structures but bring with them a wide variety of spatial, economic, political, affective, and spiritual investments which make their construction, presence, and transformation a slippery object for urban planning logics and experts. The articles also highlight the need to situate current controversies and struggles over the use of urban space by religious entrepreneurs against longer historical developments.