Global Prayers. Salvation and Liberation in the World's Megacities

Global Prayers. Salvation and Liberation in the World’s Megacities

A Transnational Project by metroZones. Center for Urban Affairs

"If God died in the cities of the industrial revolution, he has risen again in the post-industrial cities of the developing world," writes urban critic and researcher Mike Davis in his essay Planet of Slums. "Today populist Islam and Pentecostal Christianity (and in Bombay, the cult of Shivay) occupy a social space analogous to that of early twentieth-century socialism and anarchism." The mobilization of the religious in urban spaces of mega-metropolises – in the gestalt of Islamization, Hindu-Nationalism, Pentecostalism, and Evangelicals – comes along with the ethnicization of urban conflicts. This renaissance of religious and ethnic "identities" and movements – ranking among the most important actors in organizing the urban poor today – may be described as a "cultural revolution". The promise of secular political movements for a better life seems to have been substituted today by religious movements and their pledge of spiritual salvation.

The multidisciplinary project Global Prayers seeks to explore the new urban landscape of churches, congregations and faith-based organizations, and the associated alteration of promises of salvation. How do we explain their growing popularity not only in poverty-stricken neighborhoods but also among the urban middle classes geared to their own advancement? Do we witness primarily a world-spanning reaction to global crises, material hardship and processes of marginalization as a result of free market policies? Or, does the boom of denominations rather feed on cultural fragmentation, boosted by migration and "alienating" forms and forces of globalization, and the atomization of urban everyday life? Are ecclesiastical organizations, often positioned transnationally, filling, as Global Prayers, an emotional and political vacuum, the need for belonging, salvation and liberation left behind by other institutions and social forces? Can they be understood only as regressive forces exploiting the fears and anger of large parts of the population, or can they also be read as an expression of resistant collectivity pulverizing between the poles of accelerated modernization and poverty? And does the rise of religious organizations really replace secular urban movements, or were the latter not often linked just as much to religious logics and structures (see the liberation churches)? And finally, is the demise of traditional urban movements also a clear indication for the lapse and failure of emancipative urban forces, or are ethno-religious forms of organization merely implying a different understanding of emancipation, liberation and salvation?

These research questions will be pursued based on selected case studies and transnational connections: thick visual and textual descriptions of activities, strategies and sense-making of religious actors and communities in metropolises of the global South, like Lagos, Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro or Kinshasa will be sought, but also in Western megacities like London or Los Angeles, whose immigrant neighborhoods are currently experiencing trends of re-proselytization through movements of postcolonial migration and the establishment of new diasporas.

"metroZones – Center for Urban Affairs" was founded as an independent association in 2007 to bring together and discuss publicly different approaches to research, knowledge production, cultural practices and political intervention at the interface of art, scholarship and politics. We count on international, interdisciplinary and institutional cooperation. metroZones' expertise feeds on the longstanding, disciplinarily and regionally widely-branched work experience of their members in research, culture and arts, the media and urban politics. Jochen Becker (curator and critic, Lagos/Teheran among others), Britta Grell (political scientist, Los Angeles/Chicago/New York), Anne Huffschmid (cultural scientist and author, Mexico City/Buenos Aires among others), Stephan Lanz (urbanist and curator, Rio de Janeiro/Istanbul/Berlin among others), Oliver Pohlisch (cultural scientist and journalist, London among others), Katja Reichard (artist and owner of the bookstore pro qm, Berlin), Erwin Riedmann (social scientist, Berlin), Kathrin Wildner (urban ethnographer and curator, Mexiko-City/Istanbul among others).