Religion and the Urban

Abstract

If 'urban religion' can serve as a lens onto the historical entanglement of cities or even more loosely 'urban settlements', it is the spatial character of religion that needs to be understood and theoretically modelled. In the history of research, 'sacred places' have played a prominent role as loci of epiphanic character, above all in phenomenological approaches to religion, but also in studies of roles of sacred centres or pilgrimage. In many other perspectives, the temporal aspects of religion (routine, crisis rituals and rites de passage, conversion, calendar) have been foregrounded, place has been reduced to a mere setting. This paper attempts at reconstructing religious action as a spatial practice that is sensitive to and creative of the character of settlements. On that basis, it tries to develop a grid of analytical perspectives for the interaction of religion with urban space, based on a concept of religion that takes prayer as a basic form of religious communication.

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