Mapping Christian Audibilities

This paper presents an ethnographic approach to the study of Pentecostal sounds in urban spaces. Drawing from my ongoing project, Mapping Christian Audibilities, I explore sound as a material form that can be explored through fieldwork. Moving beyond traditional church settings, the paper focuses on outdoor Christian sounds—such as those produced by prayer groups, parades, and street preachers—and traces how they interrupt and interact with the sonic environment of Toronto’s Bloor Street (a major, downtown thoroughfare). By combining active listening, sound walking, and sound mapping, I examine how sound creates territoriality in urban contexts. Building on scholarship in religion, sound, and space, I argue that Christian sounds do not simply blend into the urban sonic background but actively interrupt and engage with it, creating "mixed-tapes" that make contemporary Christianity audible—and give it a complex presence—outside church buildings.