This session explores how religious identities, communities, and politics inform the production and use of everyday public spaces and infrastructures. Papers include an exploration of the yearly Ashura procession in Karachi as a marking of public space in the face of religious violence, an examination of the STAR Performing Arts Centre in Singapore as a secular space that serves religious purposes, and a proposal for attention to categories of social sin and structural sin in theological engagements with the ethical problem of automobile dominance.
This paper looks at the religious-urbanization process around the Ashura procession of Karachi, Pakistan, a practice that underlines the magnified visibility of urban religion and its effects on communities, public space, and the city itself. In this heavily religious landscape, the procession presents two interesting elements of the urbanization process: the questioning of how society and the city adjust to and negotiate the increasingly multicultural, multifaith dimensions of their urban society; and the consideration of urban religious aspirations that inspire people’s practices of being in, belonging to, and experiencing the city. In investigating the spatial, social, and religious dynamics that are particular to this interaction between the procession and the city, I explore how religious cosmopolitanism and urban aspirations affecting a multitude of faiths are enacted and transformed through Karachi’s Ashura procession.
This paper examines the intersection of religious place-making practices and material approaches in highly regulated urban contexts, focusing on the case study of The STAR Performing Arts Centre in Singapore. Originally a collaboration between CapitaLand Mall Asia and Rock Productions Pte Ltd, the business arm of New Creation Church (NCC), The STAR is celebrated as one of Singapore's architectural gems. Officially designated as ‘secular,’ it is an integrated retail and entertainment hub while serving as venue for NCC’s Sunday worship services. The analysis explores how The STAR, as a social-material assemblage, intertwines with secular, economic, religious, and cosmopolitan aspirations, serving diverse roles for various actors. The paper argues that distinctions between secular and religious spaces are fluid, challenging conventional categorizations of urban policy makers. Drawing on Marian Burchardt’s concept of ‘infrastructuring religion,’ it demonstrates how NCC’s practices imbue the building with religious significance, navigating zoning policies and bureaucratic classifications.
The dominance of personal passenger vehicles in many regions and cities causes serious ecological and social problems. This paper proposes a theology of mass transit that grapples with the ethical dilemmas around this issue. In proposing this theology, the paper builds on fragmentary and limited engagements that have existed so far to focus on two ethical imperatives: 1) The ecological impacts of automobile dominance on climate change and air quality are disproportionately suffered by poor and marginalized communities. 2) The social externalities of the costs and dangers of personal passenger vehicles are also overwhelmingly inflicted on poor residents. To respond to these issues, the paper proposes the need to account for them in terms of social or structural sin that calls for political solidarity in the development of adequate mass transit, as opposed to a focus on individual choice that would be appropriate in a context of wrongful individual behavior.