Large-scale street festivals, public processions, and open-air religious rituals enact religious, racial, and ethnic identities that anchor diverse religious communities in the secular landscape of California. The Global Religious Festivals in Secular Cityscapes Studio focuses attention on these public religious performances, “religion in the streets,” in a multi-site, multi-religious study that strives to understand public religion in California’s urban, suburban, and ex-urban contexts. We compare diverse public religious festivals: Buddhist, Chinese, Hindu, Sikh, “New Age” (American metaphysical religion), Latino Catholic, and Latino Pentecostal, among others, asking questions about the political significance of these performances vis a vis American democratic and civic culture.
Images, Text, Video ® 2015 Global Religious Festivals. All Rights Reserved.