Introduction

In this chapter we trace the contribution of geographers to the reimagination of religion and belief. Any claim that Geography has made such a contribution may come as something of a surprise to scholars both outside and inside Geography, given the staunchly secular nature of most geographical endeavour in which acceptance of religion and faith as a legitimate focus for study has been one of the last great areas of otherness that geographers have had to address. For much of its academic history, Human Geography has included a self-contained strand of research about religious spaces (particularly in the US) and in addition has recognised the contributions to wider scholarship from high-profile and self-identifying Christians (such as Lily Kong, David Livingstone and David Ley). More generally, however, the discipline has tended to equate religion with colonising practices of war, violence and proselytisation rather than as a potential contributor to politically progressive or theoretically interesting aspects of space, society and environment.

We identify at least three forms of inquisitiveness that have begun to change this rather skewed pattern. First, from positions outside of Geography, theologians and philosophers of religion have begun to interrogate geographical concepts in order to pose serious questions about space and place; Kim Knott (2005, 2008), for example, has explored specifically geographical ideas in her accounts of the theorisation of spaces and places of religion, belief and politics, and of the utility of spatial metaphors in religious and political discourse. In so doing, inherently geographical discussions about how places and landscapes are infused with social and cultural meaningfulness have attracted the interest of a wider body of scholars of religion. Second, within Geography, the emergence of religion as a global concern served to catalyse enquiry into religion across a range of sub-disciplines, particularly Political Geography (see, for example, work on religious geopolitics by Agnew, 2006; Dittmer, 2007, 2008; Sturm, 2013; citizenship by Nagel and Staeheli, 2008; and war/peace by Megoran, 2010; P. Williams, 2015), and Social and Cultural Geography, especially with regard to geographies of Islam and Muslim identities (Falah and Nagel, 2005; Gale, 2007; Phillips, 2009), intersectionality (Hopkins et al, 2017) and transnational religious subjectivities, mobilities and politics (Olson and Silvey, 2006; Gökarıksel and Secor, 2009; Sheringham, 2010; Vanderbeck et al, 2011; Ley and Tse, 2013).