CoCo investigates how sense of safety is both constructed and contested in relation to, and in, religious spaces, focusing on both intra-personal, inter-personal, and societal levels. The recent global challenges have eroded our sense of safety. Emotions and religions, combined in religious spaces, have immense power to generate both insecurity and sense of safety. We ask: How to spatially approach sense of safety in relation to, and in, religious communities as embodied spaces (referring to actual as well as mental, social spaces)? How to deepen spatial analysis on sense of safety with nuanced understanding of politics of belonging and recognition? And, how does religion both promote and erode sense of safety, and what kind of spatial-embodied dimensions are at play? Our empirical investigation takes place in three case studies: Buddhist temples, LGBTIQ+ Muslims in Finland, Germany and the UK, both in physical and virtual encounters, and a new, debated church building in Finland.

2023

2027