Postsecular City Research Articles

Religious Spaces of Care in the Postsecular City

This article examines the civic engagement of two Nigerian Pentecostal churches in London: the London Lighthouse and Freedom’s Ark. Firstly, it sets the context by reviewing the literature on immigrant religion and civic engagement, and examining the relationship between faith and social policy during the ‘decade of austerity’ and subsequent COVID-19 pandemic. It then describes the case study churches and outlines their civic activities. Finally, the article considers the characteristics of Nigerian Pentecostal churches that shape their civic activities. The increasing prominence of churches and faith-based organizations in social welfare provision in Britain has led to claims that faith groups are being co-opted into the wider processes of neoliberal governance. Drawing on research conducted in London, I show that in some contexts Nigerian Pentecostal civic activities represent ethical forms of resistance to neoliberal politics, especially those that address issues related to social and economic justice.

Connecting the local and the global in post‐secular urban settings

Postsecular geographies seek to examine how place is linked with identity and how religious identities in turn can be accommodated in public space. Postsecular practices in urban contexts have been researched extensively, but they do not always fully engage with a relational approach to place‐making. This paper argues that through the place‐making practices seen at Virgin Mary statues in Dublin city, Ireland, a relational approach to examining postsecular practices and representations provides a more productive way to understand how the secular and the religious coexist in cities. The paper uses archival and contemporary data gathered from a sample of Marian statues in Dublin city to locate the relational geographies of the religious and the secular. By focussing on the ways that the statues remain uncontested within a changing urban landscape, the paper re‐examines the political significance of religious place‐making practices. It concludes that if geographies of religion in the postsecular city are to have a broader relevance to geography, they need a relational approach to place‐making.

Teachings of Tara

AbstractThis article presents the case for a rethinking of the academy’s approach to sacred space through a demonstration of the way that a focus on unskilled actors reconfigures established approaches and interpretations. The article opens with an auto-ethnographic account of the powerful effect of Shimla’s Tara Devi temple on personal wellbeing and from this starting point spirals out to explore how Tara (and her sacred places) are connected to wellbeing both in the Himalayan region of Shimla and beyond. Through this process, arguments that I have previously made, concerning both the relation of sacred places to happiness (2010) and the way that sacred places operate in Himalayan North India (2012), are significantly complicated, leading to a reappraisal of the role that unskilled actors play in the constitution of sacred space. The article concludes by drawing these ethnographic reflections and theoretical considerations together to develop a key set of recommendations that call for policy-makers to engage sensitively with sacred places in the contemporary, post-secular city.

Domesticating the church: the reuse of urban churches as loft living in the post-secular city

In recent years, numerous mainline Christian denominations throughout Canada have sold their places of worship in the real estate market in response to declines in religious membership and participation. At the same time, a growing demand for creative residential spaces by a group of the new middle class encourages the redevelopment of churches into upscale lofts, a practice connected to but divergent from the post-industrial loft living made popular in cities like New York. In this paper, I explore how the production and consumption of churches as lofts represents a novel terrain of private urban redevelopment. Church lofts are an emergent form of housing and the latest frontier in the remaking of material, cultural and religious landscapes in the post-secular city – a context where novel forms of secularity take shape alongside new expressions of religion. With an empirical focus on Toronto, I investigate how ‘redundant’ worship spaces are appropriated and transformed into private domestic spaces of commodified religion and heritage. Rebuilt as unique but exclusive places to live, church lofts are part of a secular upscaling of the central city, a process that increasingly remakes the city as a place of capital reinvestment, middle-class colonization and socio-secular upgrading.

Tracing faith-based service landscapes: the contours of messiness at the Open Door Community in Atlanta

A burgeoning geographic literature examines the politics of faith-based organizations (FBOs) in neoliberalized social welfare landscapes. This scholarship on FBOs in the “postsecular city” argues for a “messy middle ground” that explores moments of subversion and resistance, but avoids drawing a clear dividing line between those groups that advance neoliberal agendas and those that resist them. In this paper, I use a case study approach to examine the contours of “messiness” at the Open Door Community, an FBO in Atlanta. The subjectivity of FBO participants is argued as integral to the complex set of perspectives that pre-empt any easy classification of FBO politics. Multiple, conflicting subjectivities and power disparities characterize even FBOs with emancipatory agendas.

‘Christians, out here?’ Encountering Street-Pastors in the post-secular spaces of the UK’s night-time economy

This paper explores the concept of the post-secular city by examining the growing presence of Street-Pastors in the night-time economy of British cities. Street-Pastors are Christian volunteers who work to ensure the safety of people on a ‘night out’. We contribute to work that has called for greater attention to be placed on the ways in which religious faith and ethics are performed to create liminal spaces of understanding in urban areas. Drawing upon in-depth ethnographic research conducted in a range of UK towns and cities, we consider this distinct form of faith-based patrolling in relation to the spatial processes and practices of urban-nightscapes. By exploring the geographies of Street-Pastors, we not only contribute to more nuanced accounts of ‘drinking spaces’ but provide an empirical engagement with the growing body of work on urban rhythms and encounters.

Postsecular prospects: A view from ministry

This article focuses on the emergence of an urban space of partnership between secular and faith-based groups who have come together to find ways to care for women from Manchester’s Somali community, who with the retraction of welfare services find themselves increasingly marginalised and vulnerable. It explores theoretical ideas of the postsecular turn and the way faith-praxis is beginning to be welcomed, as the space between religious and secularising forces becomes more blurred, noting also the challenge the church faces in the postsecular city.

Mosques and Municipalities in Belgium: Negotiating Urban Spaces

In Brussels, the Muslim population is numerous in certain areas. However, on a national level, Muslims represent a minority in qualitative and asymmetrical power relations that ascribe them with a different identity from the norm. This makes the formation of public policy responses around the installation of mosques the appropriate medium to analyze how Belgian society regulates Islamic presence and accommodates Muslims in the public space of a multi-ethnic, multicultural and post-secular city. Based on 50 interviews carried out with representatives of mosques in Brussels and political officials, as well as information gathered from mosque planning permission processes, the aim of this article is to go some way toward filling the scarce academic literature existing on the interaction between mosques and local political authorities. Consequently, this paper explores the short history of Brussels' local management of Islam and its Muslim population with particular regard to the establishment of mosques. I will emphasize the fact that the process of mosque construction in the Brussels urban space is underpinned by a concern for transparency and a feeling of balance vis-a-vis other religions that are more recognized in Belgium.