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2-2013

Grounded theologies: ‘Religion’ and the ‘secular’ in human geography

Justin Kh TSE Singapore Management University, [email protected]

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Citation TSE, Justin Kh.(2013). Grounded theologies: ‘Religion’ and the ‘secular’ in human geography. Progress in Human Geography, 38(2), 201-220. Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/3134

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Progress in Human Geography 2014, Vol. 38(2) 201–220 ª The Author(s) 2013 Grounded theologies: Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav ‘Religion’ and the ‘secular’ DOI: 10.1177/0309132512475105 in human geography phg.sagepub.com

Justin K.H. Tse The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

Abstract This paper replies to Kong’s (2010) lament that geographers of religion have not sufficiently intervened in religious studies. It advocates ‘grounded theologies’ as a rubric by which to investigate contemporary geographies of religion in a secular age. Arguing that secularization can itself be conceived as a theological process, the paper critiques a religious/secular dichotomy and argues that individualized spiritualities presently prevalent are indicative of Taylor’s (2007) nova effect of proliferating grounded theologies. Case studies are drawn from social and cultural geographies of religious intersectionalities and from critical geopolitics.

Keywords cultural geography, geopolitics, intersectionality, postcolonial, religion, secular, theology

I Introduction: ‘religion,’ ‘the religious scholarship in other disciplines. (Kong secular’, and geographies of 2010: 769–770) grounded theologies Similarly, Yorgason and della Dora (2009) In the past decade, there have been more than 10 argue that religion is the last terra incognita in special issues and numerous single articles on geography because it is often assessed for its geographies of religion in various human geo- relevance to secular spatial theories instead of graphy journals. However, Kong (2010) notes being studied in its own right. The problem, it that geographers of religion are still relatively would seem, is that religion remains an unde- unknown in the interdisciplinary enterprise of fined ‘black box’ in human geography, under- religious studies: mining the imperative to rectify the error that while ‘race, class and gender are invariably What remains is for greater effort to be put into invoked and studied as ways by which societies clarifying what religion is and is not. Thus far, are fractured, religion is forgotten or conflated geographers have tended to treat religion ‘as an with race’ (Kong, 2001: 212). After all, if ‘the object of empirical study’ ... rather than to religious and the spiritual were and are central engage more deeply with the theological and philosophical underpinnings of belief. This means not taking for granted the meaning of Corresponding author: religion and the sacred, but studying the com- University of British Columbia 1984 West Mall, Vancouver, plexity of religion itself ... [for] geographical BC V6Y1Z2, Canada. insights have not yet significantly influenced Email: [email protected] 202 Progress in Human Geography 38(2) to the everyday lives of vast numbers of individ- either ‘religious’ or ‘secular’. By religion,I uals’ (Holloway and Valins, 2002: 5–6; see also mean the practice of particular narratives Ammerman, 2007; Falah and Nagel, 2005; Orsi, regarding divine action, transcendent presence, 1999), to leave religion as the great geographi- or supernatural reality in the immanent world cal unknown would ignore how it ‘rather that in turn inform conceptions of place- ‘‘speaks back’’ through its own specificities – making. By the secular, I refer in particular to constraining, redirecting, interacting with, and the grounded theologies that focus on this- often problematizing the human geographer’s worldly concerns, whether by attempting to colonizing narrative’ (Yorgason and della Dora, create consensus among different positions 2009: 631). through dialogue, by privatizing transcendent While I agree that religion should be concep- experiences as irrelevant to the immanent, or tualized as a category of geographical analysis, I by imposing a political regime to eradicate ‘reli- suggest that it is not necessary to define the reli- gion’ altogether. In short, I will demonstrate that gious in geography, as if there were anything geographies of the ‘secular’ fall under the rubric that could be considered outside the bounds of of grounded theologies. This view is based on religious inquiry. Still, some working defini- my geographical reading of discussions in the tions are in order. My central argument is that interdisciplinary enterprise of religious studies the task of geographers who deal with religion which hold that, despite attempts to construct is to reveal spaces, places, and networks as con- the present as a secular age, the modern world stituted by grounded theologies, performative remains theologically constituted, albeit practices of place-making informed by under- through a proliferation of new religious subjec- standings of the transcendent. They remain tivities, including atheistic ones (Asad, 2003; theologies because they involve some view of Milbank, 2006; Taylor, 2007). Such a view, I the transcendent, including some that take a suggest, is also a critical return to Eliade’s negative view toward its very existence or rele- (1959) understanding of humanity as homo reli- vance to spatial practices; they are grounded giosus whose bent toward the transcendent has insofar as they inform immanent processes of not been fully superseded by secular foci on the cultural place-making, the negotiation of social immanent. Indeed, in what follows, I shall identities, and the formations of political demonstrate that a view of secularization as a boundaries, including in geographies where theological process itself has particular rele- theological analyses do not seem relevant. By vance for geographers, whether or not their grounding transcendent theologies in immanent work deals with ‘religion’ as conventionally geographies, I take my cue from Taylor’s (2007: conceived. 16) reference to a secular age tending to deny ‘any form of interpenetration between the things II From secularization to secular of Nature, on the one hand, and the ‘‘superna- tural’’ on the other, be this understood in terms theologies: appropriating radical of the one transcendent God, or of Gods or orthodoxy spirits, or magic forces, or whatever’, and yet Despite my interest in grounded theologies, my being unable to escape the ‘schizophrenic, or assessment of the secularization thesis is conso- better, deeply cross-pressured’ feeling of ‘the nant with Wilford’s (2010) complaint about sense that there is something more’ than the overly facile understandings of secularity in immanent (Taylor, 2007: 727). geographies of religion. An influential premise Indeed, grounded theologies can describe within geography holds that the sighting of the processes that have conventionally been labeled religious in modern contexts either disproves Tse 203 the secularization thesis (Holloway and Valins, religion. My aim has been to problematize the 2002; Proctor, 2006) or has ushered in an age of idea of an anthropological definition of religion postsecularity (Beaumont and Baker, 2011). by assigning that endeavor to a particular history However, Wilford conceives of secularization of knowledge and power ... out of which the as a social process of differentiation, fragment- modern world has been constructed. (Asad, ing the modern world by transferring sover- 1993: 54) eignty once held by sacred authorities over the Echoing Asad, my discussion of theology ostensibly non-religious to the secular state (see should not be read as arbitrarily limiting the Casanova, 1994). The result has been an field of religious discussion to the tradition that increasing individualization and privatization I prefer, or, worse yet, as an agenda to prosely- of social life worlds, including religious ones tize geographers to subscribe to my theological (Bruce, 2001; Lilla, 2008). That even practitio- views. Instead, my aim is to show that the ners can consider religion private demonstrates claims of the secularization thesis depend on a that their religious practice has been infused by subversion of Christian theology. secular ideologies. The issue is ‘not whether An influential school of thought within Chris- secular differentiation has occurred, but tian theology holds that secularization is theologi- rather what are its ultimate effects?’ (Wilford, cal because, as Schmitt (2005) once put it, ‘All 2010: 335). significant concepts of the modern theory of the However, the very secularization processes state are secularised theological concepts’. Cava- of differentiation that Wilford attempts to sal- naugh (2011) argues that secularization signifies vage are themselves theologically constituted. a ‘transfer of care for the holy from the church In this section, I shall explore the influential to state’ so that the state can ‘absorb the risk claim that what we assert to be ‘secular’ is in involved in living a mortal human life’. Argu- fact an inversion of Christian theology. To do ments in this vein of theology have come to be this, I heed Henkel’s (2005: 6) observation that known as ‘radical orthodoxy’, a school critical geographers examining religion ‘can only do so of secular ideologies that ‘police the sublime’ in close interdisciplinary interchange’ with by privatizing religion, rendering it irrelevant to theology and religious studies (see also Kong, the public sphere (Milbank, 2006: 106; see also 2010: 770). It may be strange, if not suspicious, Milbank, 1997; Milbank et al., 1999; Pickstock, to open a paper about religions with Christian- 1998). Cavanaugh’s (1998) own contribution to ity. Asad (1993) replies for me: this approach arises from work on torture in Pino- Hasty readers might conclude that my discussion chet’s Chile, in which he observes that violent of the Christian religion is skewed towards an interrogation is a process of atomization by which authoritarian, centralized, elite perspective, and social bodies (including religious ones) obstruct- that consequently it fails to take into account the ing the state’s direct claim to the individual are religions of heterodox believers, of resistant pea- scattered. What has been enacted, Cavanaugh santries, of all those who cannot be completely (2002) argues, is a new ‘theopolitical imagina- controlled by the orthodox church. Or, worse still, tion’ in which the state stewards responsibility that my discussion has no bearing on nondiscipli- over the individual bodies of its citizens without narian, voluntaristic, localized cults of noncentra- intermediary forms of solidarity like the family, lized religions such as Hinduism ... If my effort the guild, and the church. reads in large part like a brief sketch of transmu- This analysis of the subversion of the tations in Christianity from the Middle Ages until today, then that is not because I have arbitrarily Christian liturgy in secular practice has not been confined my ethnographic examples to one limited to theologians, but has been noted by 204 Progress in Human Geography 38(2) scholars of religion more broadly. Foucault self (Taylor, 2007: 506–513). Butler (2008) is (1999) suggests that, while Christian ascetic thus ‘less sure that our secularism[s] do not practices of confession were originally used already carry religious content’, pointing out by mystics to develop control over their fleshly that secularities have often been constructed in desires, they were co-opted by the 16th- and relation to theologies that they attempt to reject, 17th-century state to discipline secular govern- not through one homogeneous temporal move- mentalities in their citizenry. For Asad (2003), ment of progress (Butler, 2008: 13). Indeed, this insight is a call to perform ‘anthropologies Milbank (2006) argues outright that such secu- of the secular’ that analyze how secular reason- lar sensibilities are themselves theological ing performs the human body. He argues that because they were historically derived from the theological anthropologies shape understand- theological shifts that made secularization pos- ings of agency and pain, for example. Thus, sible. Similarly, Gregory (2012) argues that the while pain in the early Christian tradition was historical genealogy of modern secularity con- understood as redemptive, a secular anthropol- sists of carefully considered philosophical ogy splits a person into two subjectivities: a moves on the part of theological actors that public citizen of the state and a private person. simultaneously rejected a Catholic sacramental Like Cavanaugh, Asad suggests that the anthro- ontology while retaining some of its practices. pology that matters in a secular public is that of These genealogical accounts show ‘that ‘‘scien- the citizen, in which pain (such as torture) tific’’ social theories are themselves theologies caused by the state is seen increasingly as illegi- or anti-theologies in disguise’ (Milbank, 2006: timate in liberal contexts because a state is sup- 3), for such secular ‘theologies’ also approach posed to promote the productivity of citizens, the world with assumed metaphysical and cos- not render them incapable of social contribu- mological narratives about the relationship tion. However, voluntary experiences of pain between the transcendent and the world, stories in one’s personal life, especially to promote sex- performed by religious practitioners in their ual pleasure, are – like religion – strictly private everyday practices. Theology in this sense refers and not governed by the state, as long as they do not so much to the codification of religious not hinder civic participation (see Taylor, 2007: propositions to which religious adherents give 766–767). For Asad, this dualistic understand- cognitive assent, but rather to the performative ing of the body in relation to pain is at once an practice of narratives about metaphysical divine implicit theological shift that subverts Christian action in relation to the immanent world (Bene- liturgical practice and also suggests the central dict XVI, 2007; Hauerwas, 2001; Milbank, role of the state in producing secularized 2006; Orsi, 2001). Secular theologies tend subjectivities. to frame religious practitioners as individuals Yet describing the secular as theological is in relation to their private senses of the not to disavow the secularization thesis, per transcendent. se; rather, following Taylor’s (2007) acknowl- Such theological views should be of particu- edgement of ‘a secular age’ with its own condi- lar interest to human geographers, whether or tions of belief, it is to reassess secularization as not they ultimately agree with the premises of the proliferation of new religious subjectivities, radical orthodoxy. While some have used including atheistic ones, in the modern world. radical orthodoxy to critique the explanation of This ‘nova effect’ of religions, as Taylor religious phenomena via immanent social factors (2007: 300–304) calls it, is often characterized as doing ‘epistemic violence’ to grounded theol- more broadly by individual quests for spiritual ogies (Ley and Tse, 2013; Milbank, 2006; Paddi- fulfillment due to an individuated sense of the son, 2011; Yorgason and della Dora, 2009), here Tse 205 is where geographers might depart from the terms which are translated well enough by the ‘imperative’ of radical orthodoxy to return the words profane and sacred’. Likewise, Weber world to a Christian sacramental ontology (Pick- (2003 [1930]: 181) posited a metanarrative in stock, 1998: xii). A new research agenda might which the Protestant work ethic with its sacred demonstrate how grounded theologies, whether calling to work had become ‘disenchanted’ into conventionally ‘religious’ or ‘secular’, are put an ‘iron cage’ of secular asceticism apparent in to work in the contestations that continually capitalist organizational regimes that have no shape everyday human geographies. Such an room for the transcendent. Recalling James’s approach would neither dispute the secularization (2002) understanding of ‘the varieties of reli- thesis on the basis of religious phenomena nor gious experience’ as psychological phenomena, posit the secular as a purely non-theological Geertz (1973: 90) argued that religion could be social context for religions in the modern world. seen as a ‘cultural system’ examinable for its Instead, it would argue that a central but often ‘system of symbols’ that could induce ‘long- overlooked task for geographers is to map the lasting moods and motivations’ in which ‘a gen- grounded theologies whose contestations shape eral order of existence’ could be accepted as a secular age. ‘uniquely realistic’ (see Luhrmann, 2012; Taves, 1999, 2009, 2011). In these founding III Recovering homo religiosus: texts, then, ‘religion’ is opposed to the public profane in which these private psychologically transcending sacralizing constructed moods are rendered irrelevant. constructivism Geographical analyses derived from this Mapping grounded theologies entails a critical sacred-profane dichotomy may see religion as recovery of Eliade’s (1959) spatial understand- but one social practice to be analyzed in a con- ing of homo religiosus, that humanity retains a ception of space that is both ‘material and meta- sense of transcendence despite the advent of phorical, physical and imagined’ (Knott, 2005: modernity. Such a return to Eliade must be 13). Within geography, such studies fall under critical, however, for his understanding of hier- Isaac’s (1965) definition of geographies of reli- ophany, the in-breaking of the sacred into the gion that present theologically neutral readings profane, still ‘takes the sequestration of the of religious space, as opposed to religious geo- sacred too far’ as it perpetuates the normativity graphies that advance confessionally theologi- of a universal religion-secular dichotomy (Hol- cal readings of the world (Kong, 1990; Park, loway, 2003: 1962). Following Asad (1993), I 1994). Following Lefebvre’s (1991) triangula- shall show that a critical return to homo religio- tion of physical, mental, and social space, Knott sus would read ‘religion’ and ‘the secular’ as (2005) argues that religion needs to be studied performing the boundary between the public as it is lived in the contemporary spaces of and the private as a grounded theology. global capital and unequal power geometries As the founding fathers of modern religious in late modernity. For Kong (2010), these studies originally conceived of ‘religion’, spaces are represented by global shifts taking Kong’s (2010) call to define the religious would place in the 21st century: aging populations, have been simple. Durkheim (1915: 52) con- environmental degradation, rapid urbanization, tended that the ‘one common characteristic’ of and increased human mobilities. Religion needs all religious beliefs was that ‘they presuppose to be shown to be relevant to these broader a classification of all the things, real and ideal, social processes that will continue to proceed of which men think, into two classes or opposed regardless of whether the sacred engages them groups, generally designated by two distinct or not (Pacione, 2000). 206 Progress in Human Geography 38(2)

However, to relate religion to spaces that may Durkheim’s (1915: 476) totemic theological be otherwise non-religious assumes that these sociology was consistent with the universal geographical contexts for the sacred – the ‘pro- ideals of the French Revolution that attempted fane,’ so to speak – begin as non-theological. to construct a society purely through scientific When Knott (2005: 104) calls for an analysis of methodologies. While Smith (1992) argues that the contestations between the religious and the a priori non-sacred places must be sacralized, secular in making late-modern places, she sug- Durkheim suggests that what is constructed is not gests that geographers engage the work of the sacred, but rather the ‘profane’, as he replaces Jonathan Z. Smith (1978, 1992). Smith argues ‘speculation’ with ‘science’. contra Eliade that sacred spaces have to be Eliade (1959) problematizes this implicit sacralized, constructed through ritual practices, dichotomy between religious and secular space. in arbitrary places as ideological emplacements While adopting Durkheim’s (1915: 52) postu- of the sacred-profane dichotomy that map lated differentiation between the two, he flips positions of power onto physical landscapes (see Durkheim’s social primacy with a radical argu- Duncan, 1990). Likewise, Kong (2001: 212– ment that humans are primarily homo religiosus 213) also conceptualizes ‘the sacred’ as ‘situa- even if they profess to be profane. Following tional ... tied up with, and [drawing] meaning Otto’s (1923) ruminations on how the numinous from, social and political relationships’ while as an encounter between humans and the preserving a ‘substantial’ quality that is ‘poetic’. ‘wholly other’ divine is integral to the formation However, understanding the sacred as socially of human sociality, Eliade (1959: 203) suggests constructed is laced with its own theological that ‘this nonreligious man [sic] descends from assumptions, for it follows the Durkheimian tra- homo religiosus and, whether he likes it or not, dition of exclusively examining the social impli- he is also the work of religious man ... the cations of religion. Durkheim’s (1915) result of a progress of desacralization’ that is distillation of primitive religion to totemism,a apparently still incomplete, as evidenced by the collective force that unites primitive societies, myths developed in the unconscious explored is a theological statement, representing superna- by psychotherapists. Such an analysis recalled tural entities as impersonal forces (mana) that Deffontaines’s (1948) geographical argument shape the configuration of social spaces. Based that religions affected ‘land exploitation’ by on this abstract theology, Durkheim polices what framing specific times and sites as sacred, har- sociologists can and cannot know about the nessing the rhythm of the seasons to a sacred relationship between religion and society: chorus that was not humanly constructed. It also anticipated Taylor’s (2007) later observation of Of the two functions which religion originally ful- the cross-pressures of a secular age toward filled, there is one, and only one, which tends to world structures closed to sacred interference escape it more and more: that is its speculative on the one hand while being privately fascinated function. That which science refuses to grant to by the macabre and the mythological. religion is not its right to exist, but its right to dog- Cultural geographers, whether of the older matize upon the nature of things and the special competence which it claims for itself for knowing Berkeley school or of the new cultural geogra- man and the world ... [and] since there is no phy, have rightly taken on Eliade’s (1959) homo proper subject for religious speculation outside religiosus spatiality to understand how places that reality to which scientific reflection is are made. Sopher (1967) suggested that appar- applied, it is evident that this former cannot play ently anti-theological geographies of commun- the same role in the future that it played in the ism, nationalism, and fascism were in fact past. (Durkheim, 1915: 478) ‘quasi-religious’, ideological conceptions of the Tse 207 world developed from theological thought that state museums (Kong, 2005b), and new religious affected the geographical landscape as much spatialities produced by communications tech- as more self-evident religions might affect nology (Kong, 2006). Likewise, Yeoh (1996) farming patterns. Similarly, Zelinsky (1961) reads Singaporean cemeteries as the product of argued that ‘culture-regions’ in America that contestation between the sacred imaginations of may look non-theological at face value were colonized Chinese populations and a British in fact formed by dominant patterns of Catholic technocratic colonial government that privileged and Protestant denominational membership. In urban functionality. In each of these cases, places his study of ancient Chinese cities, Wheatley are made through the contestation of actors who (1971) also contended that early urban centres carry with them assumptions about the theologi- were functional sites of ritual intercession cal. The fault lines that lay between these parties before they took on political and economic often fall along factors of power, between theol- functions. Religion was an interpretive key to ogies that support dominant ruling regimes and the cultural landscape because the landscape those who resist them. itself was theologically derived. However, emphasizing theological contesta- With the advent of the new cultural geogra- tion in the new cultural geography ultimately phy, more attention was given to how the land- leads to a postcolonial critique of Eliade’s use scape was a product of contestation between of the word ‘religion’ as a universal impulse. parties that also bore implicitly theological After all, the landscape in cultural geography assumptions (Duncan, 1980, 1990; Henkel, is often the outcome of a series of disputes, usu- 2005). When Duncan (1990) read the pre- ally about the territorialization of particular modern Kandyan city as text, he did so in rela- grounded theologies over others, especially in tion to a Kandyan cosmology politically colonial and postcolonial contexts. This sug- manipulated to legitimize the sovereignty of the gests that ‘religion’ may not be an inherently king. For Duncan, this cultural geography was universal impulse, for, as Wilfred Cantwell based on a religious imagination, but, instead Smith (1991) argues, religion is itself a distinc- of simply showing the Kandyan urban land- tively western concept that has morphed from scape as theologically derived as old cultural its antique connotations of piety to its modern geographers would have done, Duncan skill- Enlightenment guise: the codification of fully showed that religious practices constantly cultural identity politics on the one hand and the reworked conceptions of Kandyan kingship, construction of an ideologically non-religious which were then reflected in the built environ- secular space on the other (see Calhoun et al., ment. In modernity, such religious power 2011). Asad (1993: 28) contends that this uni- relations often feature the secular state as an versalizing impulse is a normalizing colonial implicitly theological actor that polices religion ideology, a search for a ‘transhistorical and to reinforce state power (Mahmood, 2007). Kong transcultural phenomenon’ that obscures a post- has performed a number of case studies of such Reformation European history in which attempts state power in Singapore in spaces ‘beyond the were made to confine spiritual essences from officially sacred’ (Kong, 2001: 228): the this-worldly political activity. Masuzawa disbanding of evangelical house churches in resi- (2005) suggests that this European Christian dential areas because they are in the wrong land- project found its full realization in the construc- use zone (Kong, 2002), the tense interactions tion of ‘world religions’ as a concept, dividing between the state’s Ministry of Education and the world between the West, with its aspirations Muslim madrasah (school) curricula (Kong, to universality, and the orientalized ‘rest’, with 2005a), the collection of religious artifacts for their localized, nationalized, and racially 208 Progress in Human Geography 38(2) exclusive religions. Kwok (2005: 6) thus laments that inform their place-making practices (see ‘the lengthy history of theology’s relation with Hauerwas, 2001; Milbank, 2006; Taylor, 2007). empire building especially in the modern period’. Such an ontological reframing recalls Hollo- For these scholars, what is colonial about the way’s (2003) argument that when the sacred is word ‘religion’ is that ‘religions’ in colonized studied in the context of the everyday, the issue territories have been read through universalistic to be examined is not constructive sacralization lenses that emphasize the private experience of (see Holloway, 2000, 2010). Such observations interior transcendence, the primacy of cognitive suggest alternative ontological possibilities for belief over practice, and their irrelevance to understanding geographies of religion and the public geographies. To use this framework, this secular. Instead of placing the burden on practi- critique suggests, is to commit epistemic tioners to sacralize places that are otherwise violence on the religious traditions being studied, non-sacred, Holloway observes that the every- as it imposes particular strands of Christian theol- day, mundane objects in the New Age Move- ogy as analytical grids onto faiths that might not ment reveal that modern practitioners are not fit. The examples drawn from the new cultural sacralizing space; they are revealing and inter- geography are cases in point, as they reveal that preting its a priori sacred character. Rather than even processes as seemingly non-theological as assuming a dichotomy between ‘religion’ and urban planning are laced with theological the ‘secular’, a better approach is to study the assumptions about the place of ‘religion’ in the contestations over the particular grounded built environment. theologies that practitioners, even presumably However, pointing out that the genealogy of ‘secular’ ones with seemingly little concept of ‘religion’ as a term is problematic does not the transcendent, think appropriately interpret mean that the word is no longer salient. Instead, these geographies. After all, a secular theology it is to remark on how ‘religion’ needs to be that has little patience for transcendence – redefined so that it refers to particular grounded indeed, even an interpretation that regards trans- theologies at work in place-making rather than cendence as false consciousness – is itself a privately experienced universal spiritual position on the transcendent. essences with little relevance to issues of public Accordingly, the various spaces presumed to concern. Indeed, Asad (1993: 54) contends that be secular – especially public ones – should what we mean by ‘religion’ must be explicitly receive similar ontological treatment. Drawing translated to avoid Enlightenment pretensions from religious contestations in American public to universality: ‘The anthropological student life such as controversies over theplace of the Ten of particular religions should therefore begin Commandments in public spaces, Howe (2008, [by] unpacking the comprehensive concept 2009) notes that the popular lambasting of ‘secu- which he or she translates as ‘‘religion’’ into het- larity’ as normatively iconoclastic toward reli- erogeneous elements according to its historical gion is empirically tenuous at best, for multiple character.’ Following Stump’s (2008: 222) forms of secularity employing differential under- understanding of religious territoriality as ‘the standings of religion are at work in public social ordering of space’ through theological discourse (see Butler, 2008; Jakobsen and Pel- sensibilities, human geographers could follow legrini, 2003, 2008). Following Taylor (2007), Secor’s (2007: 158) understanding of religion the heterogeneity of possible secularities can also as a ‘way of being in the world’. Grounded be subsumed under what Asad terms the ‘particu- theologies are not abstract speculations, for they larities’ of what we translate as ‘religion’. Reject- have concrete implications for how practi- ing the ‘subtraction stories’ that premise tioners understand their own existence in ways secularity as simply omitting religion from public Tse 209 discourse, Taylor argues that a ‘secular age’ I use the nova effect as a framework to reinterpret refers to new conditions of belief best character- both the literature in geography that studies the ized as a ‘nova effect’ of a me´lange of religious social and cultural geographies of religious subjectivities. These too are theological ontolo- intersectionalities (see Dwyer, 1999a, 1999b; gies able to be mapped in conversation with each Hopkins, 2007b) as well as the literature on lived other as well as in broader reference to the ‘con- religion in religious studies that demonstrates ditions of belief’ that enable such proliferation. that individuals and local communities practice If the dichotomy between the sacred and the their religions in distinct forms that are often profane is a false one, then a case is to be made unsanctioned by official religious authorities for geographers to map how the contestations of (Ammermann, 2007; McGuire, 2008; Orsi, grounded theologies with all of their various 1998, 1999, 2010). historical particularities have shaped the mod- Social and cultural geographers have taken ern world. Religions are not merely objects of note of the intersections of religion in the con- study either as transcendent phenomena dis- struction of everyday subjectivities, especially proving the secularization thesis (Holloway and after the events of 11 September 2001 (Kong, Valins, 2002; Kong, 2010; Proctor, 2006; Yor- 2010). Indeed, before that, Dwyer (1999a, gason and della Dora, 2009) or as sacred archi- 1999b) had already demonstrated that the social pelagoes fragmented by a sea of secularity participation of young Muslim women in Brit- (Wilford, 2010). Rather, both ‘religion’ and the ain in both their religious and school commu- ‘secular’, as reconstituted in religious studies, nities led to hybrid practices of dress and are terms that refer to how grounded theologies communal life that constituted ‘alternative fem- inform place-making in a secular age. ininities’, identities expressed as being British Asian women. After the subsequent al-Qaeda attacks in global cities in the Atlantic region, this IV Placing grounded theologies: work expanded to quantitative analyses of the lived religion in the ‘nova effect’ segregation of different ethnic blocs of Muslims In this section, I demonstrate that the secular in London (Peach, 2002), a problematization of theologies I have discussed previously are the ‘parallel lives’ thesis (Phillips, 2006), and a implicitly present in social and cultural geogra- call to understand Islamic practitioners in an phies of religion and need to be explicitly intersectional matrix of religion, age, gender, and revealed as such. Given a religious studies class (Hopkins, 2006, 2007a, 2007b, 2009, 2010). framework, the descriptions of intersectional Efforts were made also to unpack the racialized religious experiences in geographical case stud- logics in anti-mosque-building politics (Dunn, ies are revealing of grounded theologies in quo- 2004; Naylor and Ryan, 2002), to destabilize the tidian place-making (Holloway, 2000, 2003, monolithic image of the Muslim woman (Falah 2006, 2010; Holloway and Valins, 2002; Kong, and Nagel, 2005), and to demonstrate that Mus- 2001, 2010). However, the theological constitu- lims all over the Islamic worldwere in fact hetero- tions of such geographies have seldom been geneous with varying understandings of identity, clearly revealed. Placed against the backdrop of citizenship, and belonging (Aitchison et al., Taylor’s (2007) nova effect, lived religions are 2007). Such geographical studies of the paradox- part and parcel of the new religious subjectivities ical intersectional assemblages in the everyday in the modern moral order, reflecting the frag- lives of Muslims often portray their quotidian mentation of a differentiated society (Bruce, practices as non-violent and diverse in the context 2001; Cavanaugh, 1998, 2002, 2011; Gregory, of escalating geopolitical tension between the 2012; Lilla, 2008; Wilford, 2010). Accordingly, Islamic world and the West. 210 Progress in Human Geography 38(2)

Such concerns with religion as an integral part Guatemala as simultaneously bringing an ethos of these assemblages typify these geographers’ of order while furthering a liberal political agenda concern that religion is not merely an ‘opiate of that feels liberating in relation to historic Catholic the masses’ that veils the contribution of more hegemony in Latin America. Similarly, Go¨karik- immanent social factors in the construction of sel (2009) demonstrates that Muslim women who subjectivities (see Marx, 1972: 12). Hopkins wore headscarves in secular Turkey resisted the (2007b: 165) argues against how ‘religion is (then) anti-veiling discipline of the state by mer- often forgotten about or is combined and sub- ging their civil subjectivities and their personal sumed under the study of race’. He calls for stud- religious expressions. The individual women she ies of the relations among religion, race, gender, studied each journeyed toward an individual reli- and age to counter the situation that, for example, gious conversion to Islam, some born into the ‘the experiences of religious and racialized faith, others later converts, each discovering the young men are marginalized from geographic wearing of headscarves in Istanbul to be what scholarship, and the geographies inhabited, con- Secor (2004) sees as spatial strategies of resis- tested and manipulated by this particular group tance to the Turkish regime’s hegemonic secular are somewhat ill-defined and unclear’. Hopkins’s spatial structure (see also Asad, 2003). Piety initiative does not only apply to men: in a collec- aside, however, Go¨kariksel and Secor (2009, tion designed to problematize the unitary figure 2010) find also that, in the Turkish veiling indus- of the veiled Muslim woman as a universal ideal try, veiling fashion itself is better conceptualized type, Nagel (2005: 13) holds that the volume as a producer of modern fashion commodities ‘makes a special attempt to explore the ways in whose decadence is resisted and reinterpreted which religious beliefs, institutions, practices, by their wearers. These religious practices are dis- and discourses shape women’s spatiality’. cussed as ‘modern’ practices, ‘enchanted’ though Accordingly, geographers who have studied they are by faith, with piety as integral to a reli- religion often demonstrate the surprisingly lib- gious interpretation of modernity as spiritual erating possibilities enabled when religions progress in the world (Deeb, 2006). intersect with other social factors to create new These geographies are paralleled in religious modern subjectivities. While focused on secular studies of lived religion, which often show how economic development, Olson (2006) argues local religious practices do not necessarily for an analysis of ‘the power of ideas’ in modern reflect official institutional teaching. McGuire religious traditions (see Olson and Silvey, (2008: 4) found through her decades of field- 2006). In Latin America, she examines the work among popular American religious move- ineffectiveness of Catholic liberation theologians ments that individuals were instructed to ‘blend for Peruvian economic development because their ‘‘traditional’’ Catholic practices (which their promises of social justice were left unful- already varied greatly, for instance by ethnic filled in the long run. In contrast, transnational group and education level) with new religious ‘health-and-wealth’ American Pentecostals are expressions that spoke to their movement’s locally revered because they subscribe to a values or to their individual lives’ (see also more holistic tradition that combines religious Orsi, 1998, 1999, 2010). Warner (2005) thus ecstatic experience with pro-development action. argues for a ‘new paradigm’ of American reli- While acknowledging that such theologies are gious sociology that focuses on how individu- themselves susceptible to co-optation for state als choose to become members of religious governmentality (see O’Neill, 2009; Taylor, congregations where religious life is lived in 2007), this assessment corroborates Garrard- gathered communities (see Chen, 2008; Ebaugh Burnett’s (1998) analysis of Protestantism in and Chafetz, 2000, 2002; Jeung, 2005; Suh, Tse 211

2004; Warner and Wittner, 1998). As Stark and Lambeth Conference are moments when differ- Finke (2000) have shown, part of this choice ences come together, emplacing the complex reflects the presence of a ‘new religious econom- intersections between factors as divergent as ics’ in which persons rationally choose sects to sexuality and religion. Indeed, for Vanderbeck which to belong, although, as Ammerman et al. (2011), not even the progressive ‘gay rights’ (2005) also shows, social change also affects how groups are monolithic; rather, they have to the people who make up religious congregations construct consensus themselves by stressing at choose to adapt – some succeeding, others failing. various points their Christian orthodoxy and Indeed, this is a key issue facing immigrant con- life-long monogamy in an effort to show that gregations in North America for, while they once they are a united movement (see Cheng, 2011, provided social services, emotional support, and a 2012). With so much proliferation of difference community built on common language and back- from the intersection of various social geogra- grounds to first-generation migrants in need, the phies, the general argument being made here is second generation and newcomers who may not that the focus of research should be on how share these backgrounds may be unintentionally individuals negotiate their own personal intersec- excluded, often to the detriment of community tions among faith, sexuality, and society despite growth (Beattie and Ley, 2003; Ley, 2008; Ley hierarchical attempts to construct hegemonic and Tse, 2013; Tse, 2011). In short, to study lived unities among diverse theological groups. religion is to accord individuals within religious However, what is seldom explicit in these communities the agency to compose their own various literatures is that examples of ‘religion intersectional subjectivities. as expressed and experienced in the lives of However, the very fact that new religious individuals’ (McGuire, 2008: 3) are themselves subjectivities are developed at such local levels contextualized by the theological backdrop of implies that Taylor’s (2007) nova effect is par- the modern world in which these subjectivities ticularly relevant to these studies. After all, proliferate in a secular ‘nova effect’ (Taylor, Taylor’s notion of a secular age focuses on indi- 2007). Even when liberal logics of individual vidual questing spiritualities, framing seculari- self-fashioning are resisted, the geographies that zation as a theological process. To miss this is result are often contestations over grounded to uncritically assume that individual religious theologies between ‘secular’ and ‘religious’ practice is inherently normative, a methodologi- parties. Mahmood (2005) illustrates this point cal issue particularly brought out by recent social brilliantly in her study of the Egyptian women’s geographies of sexuality in the Anglican Com- mosque movement in the 1990s. Eschewing the munion. Vanderbeck et al. (2010) question language of liberalism by calling her subjects ‘Christian relationality’ in their study of local ‘nonliberal’ in their practice of piety in the face Anglican congregations in England, South of state secularist attempts (see Mahmood, Africa, and the United States, showing at the 2005: 38–39), her alternative is to frame the local level how differences in theological doc- state as a proponent of secular theology that is trine are differentially accepted. Sadgrove et al. threatened by such piety movements in a clash (2010) critique how the bishops at the Global of grounded theologies (see Mahmood, 2007). Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) in Jeru- Like Mahmood, Taylor (2007) also concludes salem in 2008 attempted to construct a mono- his account with stories of orthodox Catholic lithic Christian orthodoxy by discouraging conversions to non-secular sacramental ontolo- participants from speaking with the media and gies that are born of radical discontentment with researchers. Nevertheless, Valentine et al. the cross-pressures of an immanent frame. That (2010) note that events such as GAFCON and the not all the actors Taylor describes make these 212 Progress in Human Geography 38(2) conversions, however, suggests there are also spaces for secular causes is to bracket the trans- those who cope with the cross-pressures of a cendent and elevate an immanent sphere of secular age by themselves taking on secular action, precisely the grounding of a secular theol- theological narratives even while justifying ogy. Likewise, in Levitt’s (2007) study of their own religious practices. For example, in migrants of different religions to Boston, all pointing out the fragmentation of the putatively expressed interest in the American dream and orthodox and progressive parties in the thus often straddled the middle of the political Anglican Communion, geographers may well spectrum, performing what Sopher (1967) calls have uncovered de facto secular grounded theol- a ‘quasi-religious’ nationalistic grounded theol- ogies in the constructions of orthodoxies and ogy (see Levitt, 2001, 2003; Levitt and Glick meanings of communion vying for legitimacy Schiller, 2004). Such research would give insight in global Anglicanism. Likewise, that Go¨karik- into the presence of the theological in geogra- sel’s (2009) headscarf-wearing women are phies that look ‘profanely’ non-religious but that individuals who come to discover fulfillment in are fraught with the contestation of grounded their newfound Islamic subjectivities marks them theologies. Indeed, such contestation is precisely as participants in Taylor’s (2007) modern spir- what Taylor (2007) calls the nova effect of new itualities of quest, using piety as a vehicle to find religious subjectivities made possible by secular spiritual progress and personal fullness (Deeb, conditions of belief. 2006). Following Mahmood (2005, 2007), I am not making an argument that all modern religious V Peaceful cohabitation: critical practice is inevitably secularized by discourses of liberalism, and I am not saying that all religious geopolitics and lived grounded persons become Taylor’s converts out of an theologies immanent frame. What I am saying, though, is This section imports lived religion into a discus- that both pious conversions to nonliberal tradi- sion of critical political geography. Agnew tions as well as unintentional secular practices (2006: 183) has called the 21st century the age within religious traditions happen in reaction to in which ‘religion is the emerging political what is perceived as the policing power of secu- language’, a view that I have modified with the lar theologies (Mahmood, 2007; Milbank, 2006). foregoing argument that even secular discourses Such a view would problematize recent trends are theological. Agnew’s perspective recalls in postsecular geographies (see Habermas, 2005, Casanova’s (1994) evaluation of public religions 2006; Habermas and Ratzinger, 2004), though in the late 20th century as ambivalent forms of not in the same way as Kong (2010) when she religious resurgence. Tracing the historical pri- notes the continuing presence of religion in a vatization of Catholicism and Protestantism in world assumed to be secular. When postsecular five nation states, Casanova suggests that their geographers argue that faith-based organizations forays into civil society for popular solidarity fill a service gap in neoliberal cities while allow- against totalitarian regimes in the 1960s–1980s ing persons of varying faith traditions to mingle were temporary, as they were often relegated to while pursuing common social causes (see Beau- the private sphere after their public interventions mont, 2008a, 2008b, 2008c; Beaumont and were made. At the turn of the 21st century, Baker, 2011; Beaumont and Dias, 2008; Cloke, Agnew suggests that the new issue facing critical 2002, 2011; Cloke et al., 2005), are they not in geopolitics is not the use of religions for social fact describing the grounding of secular theolo- justice, but the increased apocalyptic tenor of gies in faith-based organizations? After all, to new public religions that seem to advocate for portray de facto interfaith mixing in religious regimes of terror and exclusion. Tse 213

Following the previous sections, I contend (2010: 3) collection on the topic attempts to be that religion in geopolitics must also be under- sensitive to ‘some strands of American evange- stood as grounded theologies in practice, not licalism in perpetuating injustice and bodily as veils for immanent factors of injustice. violence (and equally ... may hold the keys Ammerman’s (1993) chastisement of the to reducing injustice and violence)’. The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation’s volume continues critiques of a premillennial (FBI) handling of the Branch Davidians in a Christian eschatology enshrined by the fictional Department of Justice Report is instructive. Left Behind series in which the Bible is inter- Ammerman criticizes the FBI for handling the preted to uncritically perpetuate American apocalyptic sect in Waco, Texas, as a mere exceptionalism and orientalism (see also Ditt- military operation, so that when armed forces mer, 2008; Dittmer and Spears, 2009). How- were deployed to force David Koresh to surren- ever, as Connolly (2010: xiii) notes in the der, Koresh enacted a mass suicide by immola- foreword, there are evangelicals who, while tion because he thought the literal end of the continuing to subscribe to conservative Chris- world had come. Ammerman argues that this tian doctrine, do not ‘demonize opponents’ and blunder could have been avoided had the FBI seek ‘expansive engagements within [their] understood Koresh’s grounded theology church’ with a ‘presumptive generosity’ toward through which he interpreted the events that the world (see Connolly, 2008). For example, were besetting him. Juergensmeyer (2010) calls Megoran (2004, 2010) demonstrates that an these grounded theologies a ‘socio-theological alternative to geopolitical conflict can be found paradigm’, a combination of sociospatial con- when religious practitioners apologize for their texts (which I have argued are themselves theolo- historical violent actions. These theological gically constituted) with explicit theological differences among Christians suggest that geo- articulations. For Juergensmeyer (2001), com- graphers also need to research geopolitical ima- prehending the role of these paradigms in the ginations produced by different theological ‘cultures of violence’ that inform religious eschatologies, including pacifist versions with terrorism enables us to understand how religious an interpretation of the end as a divine new cre- practitioners make sense of the world politically ation of a world of peace, justice, and charity instead of uncritically assuming that ‘religion’ (e.g. Benedict XVI, 2007; Brueggemann, necessarily promotes violence. 2001; Moltmann, 1967; Volf, 1996; Wright, Accordingly, while much attention has been 1992, 1996, 2003, 2008; Yoder, 1994). devoted to the motivational ability of religious In short, critical political geographers are in a imaginations to underwrite political exclusion unique position to explore the diversity of lived and expansionism (Dijkink, 2006; Han, 2008; grounded theologies as they are put to work in the Sidorov, 2006; Sturm, 2006, 2008; Wallace, shaping of geopolitical boundaries and in peace- 2006; West, 2006), current discussions of making. Butler (2003) sees this as a seminal con- religious geopolitics are increasingly nuanced temporary issue in her critique of charges of anti- (e.g. Han, 2010), shying away from assuming Semitism directed at any criticism of the Israeli that religions necessarily enshrine what Mil- state. Butler argues that there are many kinds of bank (2006) calls ‘an ontology of violence’ (see Jews, some associated with the state, some disas- Girard, 2001). In particular, theological escha- sociated, and some (like herself) who are emo- tology, the theology of the end times, has been tionally invested and critical. What is needed, underscored as a key factor in religious geopo- Butler (2011, 2012) proposes, is a new formula- litical imaginations (Dittmer, 2008; Han, tion of religious life in contemporary geopolitics 2008; Sturm, 2006, 2008). Dittmer and Sturm’s in which the narratives of dispossession enacted 214 Progress in Human Geography 38(2) by internal dissenters in each religious tradition for it conceals the theological constitution of the are explicitly discussed. These conversations world. Moreover, I have shown that such secular would establish continuity between the social conditions of belief are themselves theological, justice Casanova (1994) describes and the apoca- described most aptly by Taylor’s (2007) nova lypticism Agnew (2006) decries. Indeed, Juer- effect of new religious subjectivities. Case studies gensmeyer (1993, 2008) provocatively suggests of individual socio-theological intersections that recent forms of religious violence can often become important when placed against this back- be explained as theological actors seeking to drop, for doing so shows a hybridity between the replace secular political ideologies because of presumably religious and the secular modern. their perceived failures to seek the common good. Such geographies are politically salient, for they As Mahmood (2005: 17) reminds us, ‘an appeal to reveal that even geopolitical formations are con- understanding the coherence of a discursive tradi- structed through lived grounded theologies. tion is neither to justify that tradition, nor to argue My aim has been to show that mapping reli- for some irreducible essentialism or cultural rela- gion reveals the theological constitution of the tivism’ but rather ‘to take a necessary step toward world, empowering geographers to describe the explaining the force that a discourse commands’. interaction of grounded theologies, even secular In the face of the nova effect, geographers must be ones, at various scales. Research agendas that able to map the multiplicity of religious subjectiv- follow from this might ask how secular theolo- ities so as to lead away from violent action toward gies in the modern world police and are Butler’s prescription of religious cohabitation contested by other grounded theologies in founded on the humility that emerges from shar- place-making processes in fields as diverse as ing experiences of loss and grief and apologizing urban geographies, geopolitical formations, and for historic wrongs (Megoran, 2010). The ethical transnational migration. Moreover, they might imperative of such geographical analyses is not to inquire how those who claim to be ‘religious’ show that religions are relevant to secular politi- may be performing secular theologies in their cal discourse; it is rather to demonstrate that what spatial practices and how those who purport to continues to shape contemporary geopolitical have no ‘religious’ leanings make places formations are contestations and interactions informed by implicit theological narratives. among grounded theologies, both conventionally Religion should thus not be defined for what it religious and secular ones. is and is not so as to be made relevant to a secu- lar age. Instead, it should be used as an analyti- cal key to show that the spatial subjectivities VI Conclusion: grounded studied in geography are in fact theologically theologies and human geography constituted, an ontology that often entails con- To say that religion is a category of analysis is to testation among theologies. Indeed, such reveal the theological constitutions of contempo- research programs would have the ironic effect rary human geographies. I have advocated a crit- of showing that it is not religion that must be ical return to Eliade’s (1959) postulation that made relevant to secularity, but that secularities modern geographies have not ceased to be theolo- are but grounded theologies among many others gically constituted. However, I also acknowledge in the continuous making of modern space. that ‘religion’ as a term is a construction that in the modern era has demarcated an illusory line Acknowledgements between matters of faith and secular spaces of the I would like to thank David Ley, Claire Dwyer, purely social and political. 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