Place in the Thinking of Religion

The three-part discussion undertaken here begins with a summary of the ways space and place figure in contemporary approaches to religion particularly as shaped by the so-called ‘spatial turn’. A key point concerns the tendency for such approaches to subsume the notion of place under that of space, resulting in a mode of purely spatialized analysis in which place is effectively replaced by mere spatial location. The discussion then explores the limitations of such spatialized analysis, setting out the elements of a contrasting approach, the topological, that takes place as central, and showing why such an approach remains indispensable. The final part examines the role of place in religious experience and how this plays out in relation to presence, encounter, and transcendence.