Organized through the collaboration between the Max-Weber-Kolleg Erfurt, and the Centre for Urban Network Evolutions at Aarhus University, the conference “Lived Religion in Metropoleis: A comparative view” explored the mutual constitution of religious and urban spaces by focusing on big cities. Both the comparative approach on early modern and contemporary metropoleis and the cross-disciplinary (ancient history, early Christian studies, archaeology, sociology, social geography) training of the participants were capitalized for answering the following set of questions: How did urbanization processes and urban facets translate into religious agency, communication and identities within the mega-cities? What would ancient religion have looked like without the specific contribution of these centres to the shaping of religion and religious traditions? Are we able to narrate religious change in a way that pays sufficient attention to it? A gender- and age- balanced group of specialists, the high number of the contributors (19) advises against a fully detailed report of the conference, which deliberately shuffled the chronological order as well as the theoretical versus historical-empirical partition of the talks, and benefited from cases studies and micro-level analyses without losing touch with its broader problematic and specific scopes. All sessions were chaired by members of the “Lived Ancient Religion” project and followed by a final discussion meant to critically assess the meeting and imagine possible future appointments for elaborating on the subject. While arguing for a more precise definition of the research object (metropoleis) and wondering whether to sharpen the overall theoretical framework, the contributors shared the feeling that a new promising field has been opened for self-centered perspectives on religions. In this sense, a follow-up conference is planned for November 2017.

Conference Overview:

Jörg Rüpke (Max-Weber-Kolleg, University of Erfurt): Metropoleis and religion: An uneasy companionship

Benno Werlen (University of Jena): Religious and geographical conditions of urban realities: An interpretive approach to geographical urban research

Michael Stausberg (University of Bergen): Reflections on religion in Asian metropoleis

Rubina Raja (Aarhus University): Urban Religion in Antiocheia-on-the-Orontes – Lost in the Hinterland? Creating Images of the Metropolis through Religious Strategies (with Michael Blömer)

Esther Eidinow (University of Nottingham / Max-Weber-Kolleg Erfurt): Serapis at Alexandria: Networks and Narratives of Creation and Destruction

Jan N. Bremmer (Max-Weber-Kolleg Erfurt): The first pogrom? Religious violence in Alexandria in AD 38

Csaba Szabó (University of Pécs / Max-Weber-Kolleg Erfurt): Miniature metropoleis: The impact of Rome’s sacred landscape on the urban religion in the provinces of Illyricum

Anna Sun (Stanford University): Prayer life in Shanghai: Lived religions in a 21st century metropolis

Paul Lichterman (University of Southern California): Repositioned religious ritual in contemporary U.S. civic settings

Karsten Johanning (University of Copenhagen): Religious discourse in Dio Chrysostom’s representation of metropolis and backwater – as seen in Orations 32 and 36

Giorgia Grandi (Fondazione Collegio San Carlo di Modena): From the saint to the saints: Hilarion, Jerome and lived religion in Late Antiquity

Birgit van der Lans (University of Bergen): Controlling religion in the metropolis: symbolic politics and ‘un-Roman’ religion in Rome

Greg Woolf (University of London): Very large cities and very large sanctuaries in preindustrial societies

Teresa Morgan (Oriel College, Oxford): The role of big cities in the early evolution of Christianity

Cristiana Facchini (University of Bologna): Judaism, diaspora religions, and the urban condition

Miguel John Versluys (Leiden University): Unpacking the cosmopolitan node: Alexandria, Alexandrianism and religious innovation

Nicola Luciani (Sapienza University of Roma) and Paolo Rosati (University of L’Aquila): The role of senatorial dynasties on Mons Caelius in shaping religious identities in the late-antique metropolis, from the core to the suburbia

Markus Vinzent (King’s College London / Max-Weber-Kolleg Erfurt): Rome – the 2nd century magnet

Annette Weissenrieder (San Francisco Theological Seminary): From Peripheral Temple State to the Center of the Empire in Early Christianity