I was once told a joke of an English engineer, who shows a French engineer the plans of a machine he proposes to build. The English engineer inquires of the French engineer: "Do you think it will work?" The French engineer replies: "Sure it will work in practice, but will it work in theory?" This is exactly the question I would like to ask. Sure, the way we read the space of the city where spiritualities interact, seems to work in practice, but does it work in theory? I think that the transformation and liberation of mission is crucial in the face of the rise of this new space of the city, seeing as this is the place where most of the world’s population already live (Sheldrake, 2010:159). To transform and liberate mission, I propose we look at the way we read the space of the city where spiritualities interact. Recently the interdisciplinary journal Culture and Religion (2012) published a special edition with the theme: Believing in the City: Urban Cultures, Religion and (Im)Materiality. Each one of the city spiritualities described in the journal believed that they were somehow transforming or liberating the city. Underlying the urban spiritualities described in this edition of Culture and Religion was the metaphor of a battle for the space of the city. By publicly living their spiritualities, each group believed that they were claiming back secular space as spiritual space or claiming back spiritual space from an opposing spirituality. The city thus became the site for a zero-sum game of space for spiritualities to compete in. A zero-sum game is a game where there is only one winner and only one loser (Von Neumann & Morgenstern, 2007:46-47). A zero-sum reading of the space for urban spiritualities collapses this space into ... ... middle of paper ... ...a manifesto. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Mercer, K. (2005). Cosmopolitan modernisms. Cambridge, U.K.: Institute of international visual arts. Searle, J. R. (1980). Minds, Brains, and Programs. Behaviour and Brain Sciences, 3(3), 417–424. Sheldrake, P. (2010). Explorations in spirituality: history, theology, and social practice. New York: Paulist Press. Turing, A. M. (1950). Computing Machinery and Intelligence. Mind, 59(236), 433–460. Van Leeuwen, T. (2005). Introducing social semiotics: An introductory textbook. London; New York: Routledge. Von Neumann, J., & Morgenstern, O. (2007). Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (Commemorative Edition). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Wood, P. (2004). Varieties of Modernism. New Haven: Yale University Press in association with the Open University. Žižek, S. (2012). The Year of Dreaming Dangerously. London: Verso Books.
Phillips, E. Barbara. City Lights: Urban-Suburban Life in the Global Society. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
The city, writes St. Augustine, “builds up a pilgrim community of every language .... [with] particular concern about differences of customs, laws, [and] institutions” in which “there is among the citizens a sort of coherence of human wills.”3 Put simply: the city is a sort of platform upon which “a group of people joined together by their love of the same object” work towards a common goal.4 What differentiates Augustine’s examination from other literary or theological treatments of the city is his attempt to carve out a vision of how the city operates—both the internal qualities and external ...
The rise of densely populated urban spaces in the United States from the beginning of the second great awakening has provoked a perception of secularism and depersonalization amongst the public. The Second Great Awakening was brought in part due to the need for moral revival based on the presumption that urban areas brought a downturn religious practice through temptation and access, and also as a means with which to alleviate the ills which urbanization brought with it through the rise of volunteer associations and missionary work.1 Moreover, Utopian societies gave citizens the opportunity to recreate a society devoid of these perceived ills and also gave rise to alternative modes of practice and expre...
Scheitle, Christopher P., and Roger Finke. Places of faith: a road trip across America's religious landscape. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Print.
The urban world is about things that are going on within the cities, and the differ...
It lives on as a fleeting memory in the expansive history that is the city of Chicago, and crosses the minds of few regularly. Stretching roughly a mile in distance, Maxwell Street was once the epicenter of commerce, the birth of culture, and change. From its birth out of the Great Chicago Fire, to the first Jewish immigrants, to it’s final day as a bazaar, it is this rise and decline of Maxwell Street that has aided in cultural differentiation that ultimately gives insight into the urban spacing and transitions in the city of Chicago.
Kong, L. (2001). Mapping ‘new’geographies of religion: politics and poetics in modernity. Progress in Human Geography, 25(2), 211-233.
One’s sense of place is determined by where they feel comfortable, at home, or simply welcomed. Millions of people consider their sense of place as being in an urban setting, but millions more are cast out of the urban space. What causes this “urban unevenness”? There are many factors to consider when thinking about the urban divide including race, gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and physical and mental health to name a few. Massey’s essay, “Global Sense of Place”, discusses what she calls “time-space compression” which can explain why some people feel included in an urban space and others are excluded. Massey’s idea of “sense of place” is furthered by looking at examples from Williamson’s accounts of the destruction
Berger, Peter L. The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. New York: Anchor, 1967. Print.
With these technological advances, increasing reliance on complex technological networks for survival and the connection of bodies with the urban space through electronic and digital mediums, the city cannot simply be explained in terms of physical, tangible territories and material networks. Instead, the city should be thought more like urban systems, circuits and networks operating like a computer matrix, where urban experiences and environments are straddling the boundary between real and virtual, which is becoming increasingly blurred by cybernetic and bio technologies.
Eastman, Roger. The Ways of Religion: An Introduction to the Major Traditions. Third Edition. Oxford University Press. N.Y. 1999
Some sociologists claim that what changes primarily is the social system and religious change is an effect of the change in the former. It is not religion but, to a larger extent, the economy that is supposed to legitimize reality. From this perspective it is the social system that changes and this change in relation to religion means secularization, which generally speaking means the diminishing impact of religion on social life at various levels, degrees and intensities. Theories such as Luckmann’s privatization thesis or Hervieu-Le´ger’s emotional theory of religion may be categorized as giving priority to changes within the individual. The fundamental thought is that in contemporary society it is primarily the individual who changes. It is the individual that seeks direct contact with the sacral sphere, is driven by emotion, feeling, a personal and individualized need. The third current of theoretical solutions to the question of what predominates in modern and post-modern changes is the one that points to religion itself as the sphere of these changes. It is neither the society nor the individual, but rather religion that is pushed to the forefront of the phenomenon. Religion in confrontation with modernity takes on new forms which function well in the modern
In R.T. Legates, & F. Stout (Eds.). (2009).The City Reader. (4th Ed.) New York, NY. Routledge.
Most of the contemporary problems bedeviling our society are because of lack of proper spiritual anchorage. Civil and technological differentiations embodied in the media have aggravated the situation. Technological differentiation has undermined religion by taking the place of spirituality in adherents’ lives.