ABSTRACT

Spirituality is, too often, subsumed under the heading of religion and treated as much the same kind of thing. Yet spirituality extends far beyond the spaces of religion. The spiritual makes geography strange, challenging the relationship between the known and the unknown, between the real and the ideal, and prompting exciting possibilities for charting the ineffable spaces of the divine which lie somehow beyond geography. In setting itself that task, this book pushes the boundaries of geographies of religion to bring into direct focus questions of spirituality.

By seeing religion through the lens of practice rather than as a set of beliefs, geographies of religion can be interpreted much more widely, bringing a whole range of other spiritual practices and spaces to light. The book is split into three sections, each contextualised with an editors’ introduction, to explore the spaces of spiritual practice, the spiritual production of space, and spiritual transformations.

This book intends to open to up new questions and approaches through the theme of spirituality, pushing the boundaries on current topics and introducing innovative new ideas, including esoteric or radical spiritual practices. This landmark book not only captures a significant moment in geographies of spirituality, but acts as a catalyst for future work.

chapter 1|21 pages

Spaces of spirituality

An introduction

section 1|76 pages

Spaces of spiritual practices

chapter 2|12 pages

Spiritual propositions

The American evangelical intelligentsia and the supernatural order

chapter 3|17 pages

Resisting marriage equalities

The complexities of religious opposition to same sex marriage

chapter 4|13 pages

Building sacred modernity

Buddhism, secularism and a geography of ‘religion’ in southern Sri Lanka

chapter 5|15 pages

‘I renounce the World, the Flesh, and the Devil’

Pilgrimage, transformation, and liminality at St Patrick’s Purgatory, Ireland

chapter 6|15 pages

Ministers on the move

Vocation and migration in the British Methodist Church

section 2|101 pages

The spiritual production of space

chapter 7|19 pages

Suburban miracles

Encountering the divine off Highway 99

chapter 8|15 pages

Kendal Revisited

The study of spirituality then and now

chapter 11|16 pages

Transnational religion and everyday lives

Spaces of spirituality among Brazilian and Vietnamese migrants in London

section 3|98 pages

Spiritual transformations

chapter 13|16 pages

The magical battle of Britain

The spatialities of occult geopolitics

chapter 14|13 pages

‘Where should we commence to dig?’

Spectral narratives and the biography of place in F. B. Bond’s psychic archaeology of Glastonbury Abbey

chapter 15|11 pages

Categorizing Spiritualism as a shamanism

Lessons in mapping

chapter 16|15 pages

Jung’s legacy

The Western Goddess Movement 1

chapter 17|18 pages

Boundaries of healing

Insider perspectives on ritual and transgression in contemporary esoteric theatre

chapter 18|19 pages

Reading three ways

Ask me how!