“Urban religion" is not the generic term for any religion existing within an urban environment. Emiliano Rubens Urciuoli demonstrates that examining early Christianity as an urban religion involves understanding that certain fundamental attributes, usually seen as inherent to this religion, can be better explained as outcomes of particular urban conditions and distinct uses of urban space - in other words, as urban effects.
Religion and urban life are the most successful strategies of handling, enhancing, and capitalizing on human sociability. By integrating religious studies, archaeology, and spatial theory, Emiliano Rubens Urciuoli aims to re-describe the formation of Christ religion as urban religion. Spanning almost four centuries of Christian literature from Paul to Augustine, the author shows that several characteristics commonly attributed to Christ religion are, in fact, outcomes of the distinct ways in which religious agents enact urbanity and interact with the urban space. The study brings the urbanity of religious agents into focus, shedding light on significant elements of religious transformation, innovation, institutionalization, empowerment, and resistance to power. Simultaneously, it explores the key urban features that shaped the emergence and development of Christ religion.
Table of contents:
Citification of Religion: Studying Urban Religion Historically
I. Jumping Among the Temples: Against the Polytheists' »Spatial Fix«
II. An Archetypal Blasé? Justin Martyr, the Metropolitan Man, and the Segmentation of Urban Life
III. (Good) People Next Door: Christ Religion in the Neighborhood
IV. The Poverty Plateau: The Space of the Urban Street Poor
V. Urban/e Distances: Secrecy, Discretion, and a Religious Guide to Urbanity
VI. Smyrnean Detours: The
Martyrdom of Polycarp as Urban Religious Event
VII. Leading by Writing: Cyprian's Management of a Heterarchical Crisis
VIII. Time to Build: Christians' »Right to the City« Between Dura and Tyre
IX. A Tale of No Cities: Searching for Urbanity and Urban Religion in Augustine's
City of God
Recaps, Clarifications, Confessions, and Disclaimers: The Religion of Urban Religion
