Urban Prayers: The Reinvention of Religion in the City

New religious movements are booming. One reason for this is the worldwide change in religions. Faith and religion are no longer largely the preserve of unsophisticated villagers. On the contrary, being a believer is now trendy, and religion is moving into metropolitan areas and changing urban life. This is happening with all religions across the globe, and these systems of belief are undergoing reinvention in the city. Urban Prayers takes a look at the new, urban forms of faith and religion in Berlin, Istanbul and Lagos.

Berlin was long regarded as the “world capital of atheism”. Today, free-church Christian congregations celebrate Sunday services in the city’s hippest locations, cinemas, theatres, nightclubs and co-working spaces. Their clientele: academics, artists and media professionals.

On the outskirts of Istanbul, a new gated community of Basaksehir sprang up in the 1990s. Today, it is home to more than 60,000 people, traditional religious Muslims who are shielded from the rest of the city and want to combine their religious beliefs with the advantages of a modern, upscale lifestyle.

Not far from Lagos, Nigeria’s largest Pentecostal church is building its own “City of God”, modelled on the Vatican. At its centre is the “Auditorium”, almost 2 kilometres long and 1 kilometre wide. This is the venue of one of the largest regular church services in the world, with almost a million worshippers. The church has 7,000 congregations in Lagos alone and over 24,000 across Nigeria.

New religious movements are increasingly intervening in the political, economic and social structures of metropolitan areas. Our film examines the extent to which this is changing the cities, but also the religious movements themselves. Will urban life become more religious and religions more secular? The post-secular city is already a reality. But what exactly does that mean?

World Premiere: iRep, International Film Festival Lagos, Nigeria, March 2013

First broadcast: 20.8.2013, on arte

Honored with the Premio Award Changes at the Religion Today Film Festival, September 2014