This paper advances the geographies of religion, spirituality and faith's limited attention to positionality by discussing the critical issues raised when using participatory approaches. Reflecting on three cases of participatory research, we foreground the dynamics of being a researcher with faith when working with participants from faith communities. Advocating participatory approaches as valuable methodologies that should be used more extensively to explore beliefs, faith practices, and social justice, we argue that greater attention needs to be given to the positionality of researchers undertaking this sort of research. Our cases raise three themes for discussion. First, the variety of ways in which faith positionalities influence how research is developed, conducted and concluded. Second, the intersections between our faith and other positionalities and how they shape our roles and relationships with research participants. Third, the fluid and multifaceted nature of faith positionalities and how they are changed, emphasized, and softened through the dynamics and entanglements of fieldwork. In doing so, we reflect on the complexities of being a researcher with faith, argue that faith positionality is a helpful dimension of their research rather than a limitation, and that all cultural, social and historical geographical researchers should reflect on their faith positionality.

Using and adapting the ideas of material religion, this paper considers Wesleyan Methodist circuits: the organisation of chapels within specific geographical areas into co-dependent communities. Interested in circuits as an example of the extension of religious space beyond institutional contexts -the extended geographies of religionit highlights the importance of thinking about such spaces as material things. Using two circuits in London (Bow and Highgate) as case studies, this paper focuses on representations of circuits and their visual and material qualities. It then explores how material approaches facilitate insights into the differences between how religious leaders designed these spaces and how individuals experienced them.Taking a material approach to congregational bodies, objects and (sub)urban landscapes, it simultaneously considers how material things gain meaning through their participation in humans' social networks and as a result of their inherent material properties. In particular, it argues that taking this material approach to the extended geographies of religious practice is an effective method of gaining insights into individuals' everyday experiences of religious spaces. Most specifically, it emphasises how the insights that material approaches provide into everyday religious practices are especially useful when studying individuals in the past, as their voices are generally unrepresented in the official archival documents of religious institutions that historical research into religious communities is often dependent on.

Using Wesleyan Methodism in London between 1851 and 1932 as its case study, this paper explores the potential methods and outcomes of studying religious spaces as material items. Interested in both the “becoming” of their physical material properties and social meanings, this paper considers how geographical research can engage with debates within material culture studies about the relative importance and consequences of analysing the material qualities or social meanings of material items. This paper also responds to geographical and historical approaches to religious practices that are increasingly interested in individuals’ everyday experiences of religion, suggesting that studying the becoming nature of religious space can provide insights into historical congregational experiences. Finally, reflecting on the inevitable gaps and inconsistencies in historical archives, this paper assesses the methodological possibilities and viability of using material sources and analysis in historical geography.

Using two geographically contrasting case studies, this paper explores the multiple ways in which London's purpose-built Wesleyan chapels were used between the 1851 religious census and the reunification of the Methodist Church in 1932. Specifically focusing on chapels in the Bow and Highgate areas of London, it explores how the uses of these spaces varied over time and space, highlighting similarities and differences between urban and suburban Wesleyanism. Identifying three categories of chapel use associated with worship, social gatherings, and more-than-Wesleyan uses, it traces the practices, people and objects connected to these different uses and argues that they can provide insights into historical congregational experiences. As such, this paper makes a rare historical contribution to broader discussions within current geographical studies of religion about individuals' everyday experiences of religion, faith, and spirituality.

This article uses archival references to maintenance and repair to approach nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Wesleyan chapels and their material contents as ‘becoming’ things. Reflecting on the material changes that made the maintenance or repair of Wesleyan chapels necessary, or occurred because of these processes, it considers what maintenance and repair reveal about everyday practices and experiences within these communities. This article’s approach allows it to draw conclusions about individuals’ personal and mundane engagements with Wesleyanism in London during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As such, it overcomes some of the problems that historians interested in the everyday have traditionally faced as a result of the shortage of surviving personal testimonies about the everyday nature of church attendance during this period. Using Wesleyan chapels from London’s northern suburbs and East End as case studies, this article particularly focuses on the repair and maintenance of organs and chapel interiors. It uses these examples to reflect on the practicalities of everyday life in Wesleyan communities, demonstrating how considering moments of repair and maintenance highlights the (sometimes fraught) interrelationships between the spiritual, social, and practical priorities of Wesleyan communities.