Organised by the Centre for Advanced Studies on “Religion and Urbanity: Reciprocal Formations” (DFG-Kollegforschungsgruppe 2779), one of the research groups of the Max-Weber-Kolleg of the Universität Erfurt, the aim of the “Making New Faith In/Visible” workshop centered on how new religious groups employed strategies to either make their faith visible or invisible. The workshop focused on how moments of visibility and invisibility impacted the urban landscape and fabric of cities, especially when considering urban topography and architecture, actions that staged new faiths ephemerally, and how the arrival of new faiths altered the “city-branding” efforts through texts, images, and material objects.

As workshop organizers MARTINA STERCKEN (Zürich) and SUSANNE RAU (Erfurt) have noted, visibility has become a most relevant subject and this not only in various fields of research including the political discourse. Particularly the 2009 Swiss Mosque debate has made clear that making new faiths visible is limited by power structures. With a central focus surrounding strategies of visualisation or invisibilisation, different cultural settings for new faiths, and the appropriation of urban space by new faiths in the long run, this workshop presented case studies ranging from Mediterranean antiquity, early modern Europe, colonial North Africa, modern India, and southeast Asia.

The workshop presentations started with SUPRIYA CHAUDHURI (Kolkata) discussing the role of the Indian politician B. R. Ambedkar and his perception of a new active participation of Buddhism in the Fifties. After the “rediscovery” of Buddhism in the nineteenth century which followed to the near wipeout of the religion in India, Ambedkar’s ideas allowed the conversion to Buddhism to coincide with an escape from the caste system. Simultaneously it appropriated the urban landscape by mass events, signs and architecture. Thus, the revival of Buddhism under Ambedkar adapted an “old” faith to modern times.

Following this, KATJA RAKOW (Utrecht) explored how new Pentecostal mega churches in Singapore repurposed commercial spaces for religious worship. With a focus on the New Creation Church and the City Harvest Church, Rakow examined the finances, business holdings, and donations to acquire urban commercial spaces for worship. The Singaporean Urban Redevelopment Authority in 2010 tightly regulated commercial space for religious activities, as religious sites are regulated by population. Since this put new faiths at a disadvantage, the new Pentecostal churches built new buildings with commercial purposes to bypass religious restrictions. Visibility was not achieved through a classic church and traditional religious symbolism, but by amalgamating religious sites with commercial structures.

Moving to early modern Europe, MARTIN SCHEUTZ (Vienna) examined how sixteenth-century Vienna experienced the Reformation. Despite being a devout Catholic urban space, the new Protestant faith also challenged society here, however developed rather in secrecy. Statistical observations indicate e.g. that confraternity memberships declined during this time. However, following the executions of the Anabaptists in Vienna and the Catholics reconquering Protestant spaces with Corpus Christi processions in the seventies of the 16th century, noble houses became centres of Protestantism. The new faith moved to the periphery, for instance to Hernals which transformed to become the centre of Protestant worship until the Counter-Reformation.

TOM HAMILTON (Durham) analysed the role of the Paris civic militia during the French religious wars. As protestant cult was forbidden by law and protestants were not easy to recognise, these local organisations played a prominent role in order to discover individuals and networks attached to the new faith. Minutes of interviews report their importance when neighbours and community leaders were identified as possible protestants. This knowledge about people that presumably supported Protestantism enabled the law to keep records of the invisibility and visibility of the new faith. However, the image by François Dubois “La masacre de San Bartolomé” (between 1572 and 1584) has provided a visualisation of the situation in Paris that has become iconic.

KATALIN SZENDE (Budapest) discussed changes and transformations to Bishops’ Seats in Hungary during the Ottoman period. Major cities such as Esztergom and Pécs saw the most change during the period of Ottoman rule. With considerable speed, the Ottomans reused Christian churches and constructed new mosques in open spaces. Whilst there were no major changes to the street plans, an element of religious verticality was introduced with the Islamic minarets. The call to worship altered the concept of time in early modern Hungary. But following the re-introduction of Catholicism, the mosques were reverted back to churches to erase the traces of the Ottomans. This episode shows how far religious change is also influenced by the state and the establishment of new borders.

The next day, NORA LAFI (Berlin) discussed re-interpretating Jewish spaces in colonial Tunis. Before the colonial era, Jewish identity was made visible in the public space through community and economic interactions. However, European presence increased in the late Ottoman period and created a new sense of Jewish identity and Jewishness through a revision of Jewish community governance. More monumental forms of synagogues followed which transformed the urban space and allowed for a new colonial redefinition of visible Jewishness. A new colonial Jewish modernity emerged that contrasted with local Jewish traditions and resulted in separation of Jewishness from daily life spatialities.

MARTIN CHRIST (Erfurt) presented new research on group formation in early modern Hội An (Vietnam). In the seventeenth century Hội An had a diverse population – including people from China and Japan but also from the Netherlands, France and India – which allowed the city to play a major role trading and commercial networks. These groups seem to have coexisted in peace, and this situation enabled Hội An to be branded as a peaceful town. The groups competed in terms of trade, but they were not ghettoized and intermarriages were possible. This allowed for the blending of foreign and local influences in religious architecture, with a pagoda on a Japanese bridge (which marks a liminal situation in town) being a prime example.

This was followed by EMILIANO RUBENS URCIUOLI (Bologna) discussing visibility regimes in early Christ religion which have been an important subject matter in this period. The presentation focused on Paul’s visit to Athens and his Areopagus speech that is depicted in the Acts of the Apostles. The contribution to “value of not seeing in the religious sense” looked at how early Christians could “learn to un-see” religious elements in the urban space. This can discern how early Christian writers leveraged urban sensory to obscure, blur, or distort the visibility of other religions. Being invisible, so the example teaches, doesn’t necessarily correlate with being unknown.

The final paper saw VERENA FUGGER (Erfurt) elaborate on Christian appropriation of urban space in late antique Ephesus. The transformation from a Greco-Roman to a Christian cityscape was carried out here since the 5th and 6th centuries, mainly through the building of churches and through marking profane building structures and boundaries with a cross. The connection of holy sites through ceremony contributed to the visibility of the Christians and helped to change the urban landscape profoundly. Furthermore, hagiographic narratives charged places with Christian memory.

In the closing discussion, Rau and Stercken noted the different cultures, medial constellations (buildings, crosses, reliquaries, processions, public conversions, maps, drawings, stories) and the different nature of space explored in this workshop. Opening the discussion, they pointed out to the consequences of a foreign religious group arriving in the urban sphere and triggering established communities; they emphasised the means of making belief visible, their individual temporality and cultural individuality; they stressed the extent to which religious groups aim to make themselves visible at all; and, finally, they underscored the long tradition of discourses on this matter.

Conference overview:

Martina Stercken (Zürich) / Susanne Rau (Erfurt): Welcome and Introduction

Panel I

Chair: Daria Pezzoli-Olgiati (Munich)

Supriya Chaudhuri (Kolkata): The Buddha in the City: Conversion, Faith and Representation in 19th and 20th Century India

Katja Rakow (Utrecht): Religious Place-making in Commercial Infrastructures: Pentecostal Megachurches in Singapore

Panel II

Chair: Vera Henkelmann (Eschweiler)

Martin Scheutz (Vienna): Transformed Urban Space. Tentative Approaches to the Reformation in 16th Century Vienna

Tom Hamilton (Durham): Making Huguenots Visible: The Spatial Distribution of Militia Arrests of Protestants in 16th Century Paris

Katalin Szende (Budapest): Cathedral Cities Conquered: Topographical Changes of Bishops’s Seats in the Kingdom of Hungary in the Ottoman period

Panel III

Chair: Sara Keller (Erfurt)

Nora Lafi (Berlin): Re-interpreting Jewish Spaces in Colonial Tunis

Martin Christ (Erfurt): Group Formation and Foreign Traders in Early Modern Hội An (Vietnam)

Panel IV

Chair: Harry O. Maier (Vancouver)

Emiliano Rubens Urciuoli (Bologna): Seeing with the Heart: Visibility Regimes in Early Christ Religion

Verena Fugger (Erfurt): Becoming Visible: Christian Appropriation of Urban Space in Late Antique Ephesus

Martina Stercken (Zürich) / Susanne Rau (Erfurt): Discussion and Closing