Religious metropolitan mainstream

On the contemporary relationship between cities, religion and neoliberalism

Abstract

Contrary to assumptions in traditional urban theory that understand religion as external or peripheral to urban modernity, cities have by no means been secularized over the course of the rapid global urbanization processes of recent decades. Instead, the much discussed return of religion in the public sphere is primarily an urban phenomenon. At a global level, metropolises have become laboratories and arenas for new religious phenomena exercising a huge influence on urban spaces, cultures and societies. Current research in various world regions shows that religion does not represent some exotic reminiscence. Rather, its agency unfolds at the heart of contemporary metropolitan modernization. Based on the results of case studies that the transregional research project “Global Prayers – Redemption and Liberation in the City” has conducted in cities like Berlin, Istanbul, Lagos and Rio de Janeiro, the paper argues that the religious appears to be expanding in all other areas of the production of the urban in such a manner that it is increasingly difficult to say where religion stops, and where it begins. It shows how urban religions, generally interpreted as reactions to social relocations caused by global neoliberalism, can as well be understood as driving forces of contemporary urban capitalism itself.