ABSTRACT
Since the early 2000s, geographers have been encouraged to investigate religious experience and spirituality ‘beyond the official’ spaces of institutionalized religion (Kong 2001). What is ‘official’ is often constituted by the spaces sanctioned for religious purpose, practice, symbolism, and expression by governmental or specific organizations perceived to have legal or social authority. To be ‘unofficial’ is considered that which is not sanctioned by, and in some cases even resisted by, local authorities or religious organizations and groups. Western societies are increasingly resisting official narratives, and schemes of social organization are moving towards unofficial actions and praxis as part of the ‘massive subjective turn of society’ (Taylor 1991, cited in Heelas and Woodhead 2005).
