This paper, entitled "Mapping Christian Audibilities” presents an ethnographic approach to the study of religion, with a particular focus on Pentecostal Christianity. Inspired by the Call for Proposals on Sensorial Landscapes and the Senses, as well as the encouragement to explore creative and alternative formats that engage multiple senses, I propose to examine sound as a material form that holds fieldwork significance for my ongoing project, "Mapping Christian Audibilities”.
The idea for Mapping Christian Audibilities emerged from my decision to study Christianity without visiting churches. While I had studied Nigerian Pentecostalism by attending Sunday church services in Nigeria, Germany, and Austria over the past few years, it was the Christian sounds on the streets of Toronto that caught my attention when I moved there in 2021. On a seemingly random basis, sounds such as distant church bells, Nigerian Pentecostals marching down the street in a worship parade, or street preachers sharing their messages through a speaker would often interrupt my daily commutes.
These daily interruptions marked the beginning of a twofold shift in my ethnographic study of Christianity. While I had previously focused on studying Pentecostal Christianity within church settings, observing their performances with an emphasis on aesthetics, I suddenly found myself studying a diverse range of Christian traditions on the streets, listening to how their sounds interacted with each other and the surrounding sonic environment. In line with this change in field site, my methodological approach also shifted. I intentionally began to listen to these sounds and the way they interrupted the ambient ‘noise’ of the city, adopting an active listening approach that included methods such as sound-walking. This allowed me to map various sounds along Bloor Street in downtown Toronto and study how different sounds mark distinct territories, in the sense of claiming specific urban spaces during their sonic presence.
There are pioneering studies on the relationship between religion and sound (Hackett, 2012), and the field of conceptualizing sound in relation to space (cf. de Witte, 2008) is widely studied. This ties into the larger field of exploring the relationship between sound, materiality, and sociality (cf. Feld & Brenneis, 2004). At the same time, the study of large-scale acoustic environments or ‘soundscapes’ (Schulz, 2008) continues to explore how sound structures spaces and creates boundaries (cf. Weiner, 2011; Schulz, 2003). Other approaches call for a more embodied perspective on the sonic dimension of religious sounds (de Witte, 2008), showing how the spatial practices of religious groups demonstrate the perceived power of these sounds to access the invisible world of spirits. Some scholars also examine sound as material culture (Weiner, 2011), focusing on how sounds mediate contact between diverse religious groups (Weiner, 2009), including the ‘noise’ of the religious other.
The conflicting ways sound relates to space have served as an entry point for studying how different religious groups claim and sacralize urban space through practices of sound (de Witte, 2008: 705-707). Studies of charismatic groups, in particular, highlight their loud modes of worship, prayer, and preaching, combined with the use of powerful sound technology and the open architecture of their worship buildings and meeting places. These elements offer a starting point for thinking about an auditory space that extends beyond the physical boundaries of sacred spaces (de Witte, 2008: 705).
When combined with practices aimed at instilling Christian qualities in places (Bandak, 2014: 259) or the construction of sacred and ritual spaces within urban environments (David, 2012), religious place-making strategies have become central to understanding how sound serves as a critical medium for investigating religious practices. This also helps us understand how religious ideas, concepts, and actions interfere with spatial notions of the public sphere.
While there is significant emphasis on how ambient religious sounds in public spaces show that religious practices can blend into the sonic environment, thus becoming part of the aural landscape (Derogatis and Weiner, 2022), and that this sonic background influences religious practice (Derogatis and Weiner, 2022), I argue that Christian sounds (1) interrupt the sonic background of urban spaces, and (2) use it as a baseline to create entirely new tunes and sounds of Christianity, or “mixed-tapes” of Christianity, out on the streets.
Pioneering projects, such as the American Religious Sounds Project, aim to document the sounds produced by religious communities and those heard in religious spaces to create a digital sound map of religious life. Building on the focus of "sounds around religion" (Derogatis and Weiner 2022: 37) and the ways in which religious ideas and actions cross into the public sphere, expanding this focus will allow us to: (1) shift from focusing primarily on how religious sounds blend into their sonic environment to exploring how they interrupt and interact within urban sonic atmospheres; and (2) make Christianity and its sonic perception audible in entirely new ways—through "mixed-tapes" that sonically map the sounds of contemporary Christianity out on the streets, rather than inside buildings.
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.