Religion geography

Religion and geography is the study of the impact of geography, i.e. place and space, on religious belief.

Another aspect of the relationship between religion and geography is religious geography, in which geographical ideas are influenced by religion, such as early map-making, and the biblical geography that developed in the 16th century to identify places from the Bible.

Traditionally, the relationship between geography and religion can clearly be seen by the influences of religion in shaping cosmological understandings of the world. From the sixteenth and seventeenth century, the study of geography and religion mainly focused on mapping the spread of Christianity (termed ecclesiastical geography by Issac 1965), though in the later half of the seventeenth century, the influences and spread of other religions were also taken into account.

Other traditional approaches to the study of the relationship between geography and religion involved the theological explorations of the workings of Nature – a highly environmentally deterministic approach which identified the role of geographical environments in determining the nature and evolution of different religious traditions.

Thus, geographers are less concerned about religion per se, but are more sensitive to how religion as a cultural feature affects social, cultural, political and environmental systems. The point of focus is not the specifics of religious beliefs and practices, but how these religious beliefs and practices are internalised by adherents, and how these processes of internalization influence, and is influenced by, social systems.

Traditional cultural geographical approaches to the study of religion mainly seek to determine religion’s impact on the landscape. A more contemporary approach to the study of the intersections of geography and religion not only highlights the role of religion in affecting landscape changes and in assigning sacred meanings to specific places, but also acknowledges how in turn, religious ideology and practice at specific spaces are guided and transformed by their location.

Religious experiences and the belief in religious meanings transforms physical spaces into sacred spaces. These perceptions and imaginings influence the way such spaces are used, and the personal, spiritual meanings developed in using such sacred spaces. These religiously significant spaces go beyond officially religious/spiritual spaces (such as places of worship) to include non-official religious spaces such as homes, schools and even bodies. These works have focused on both material aspects of spaces (such as architectural distinctiveness) and socially constructed spaces (such as rituals and demarcation of sacred spaces) to present religious meaning and significance.

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