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AbstractPublic debates and controversies on moral issues have gained visibility in recent decades in both Spain and Mexico. Conservative Catholic groups and networks are increasingly playing a crucial role in raising and framing highly morally charged themes in the public arena, especially on intimacy‐related policies, including sexual and reproductive freedoms. A new generation of young Catholic leaders becoming key political agents has emerged in this scenario. They are fostering new mobilisation repertoires in the public sphere (e.g., digital activism and public performances) and promoting new political narratives merging moral, cultural, and religious elements. These highly religious and conservative young Catholics consider themselves part of a cultural/cognitive minority and feel entitled to become what Howard Becker termed "moral entrepreneurs." Most have been educated in Catholic schools and belong to Catholic movements. Still, they can also navigate secular politics and strategically use different regimes of justification and action. Within this context, the article aims to examine and compare the intersection of historical trends and the relevance of individual biographies to understand the role of these young Catholics in the public space in both countries.

The articulation between religion, politics and the law in contemporary European societies is a complex matter. In this article, we argue that classical secularization approaches fail to capture the ambivalent form of Catholicism in Europe, and we advance an alternative approach that reconsiders two elements: temporality and social space. Firstly, we propose to adopt an "eventful temporality", which enables the consideration of the impact of unexpected social and political events in altering the direction as well as shaping the public presence and form of religion. Secondly, we stress the need to focus on understanding the specificity of the different fields in which religion is mobilized, and the configuration and dynamics of each of these fields to explain the current weight of Christian majority churches in European societies. Drawing on empirical data from Spain, we examined the role and influence of Catholicism in three fields of public life: that of public services, that of morality politics and finally, that of the politics of belonging. In doing so, we identified their different temporalities (a long-term inertia in the first case, more abrupt changes in relation to the other two) as well as their specific dynamics in terms of actor constellations, issues at stake and symbolic repertoires.

Much is known historically about the formal place for religion and spirituality in various countries. Less is known sociologically about the actual ways religion and spirituality are present in public institutions or about the conceptual and methodological assumptions that underlie how scholars approach the study of religion within public institutions. We conceive of public institutions broadly as those institutions that need to follow state regulations, are publicly accountable, and are supported (totally or partially) with state funds. We aim in this symposium to begin to develop a comparative analytical framework for analyzing ways religion and spirituality shape and are shaped by public institutions across three distinct sectors—hospitals, the military, and prisons—in Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States. We outline three questions—the descriptive, the analytic, and the methodological—and suggest points of analytic comparison that might facilitate a systematic comparison of public institutions across several countries.

Much is known historically about the formal place for religion and spirituality in various countries. Less is known sociologically about the actual ways religion and spirituality are present in public institutions or about the conceptual and methodological assumptions that underlie how scholars approach the study of religion within public institutions. We conceive of public institutions broadly as those institutions that need to follow state regulations, are publicly accountable, and are supported (totally or partially) with state funds. We aim in this symposium to begin to develop a comparative analytical framework for analyzing ways religion and spirituality shape and are shaped by public institutions across three distinct sectors - hospitals, the military, and prisons - in Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States. We outline three questions - the descriptive, the analytic, and the methodological - and suggest points of analytic comparison that might facilitate a systematic comparison of public institutions across several countries.

1. Introduction -- Part 1. After the secular city: religion and urban effervescence. 2. Religion in the street: a popular neighborhood in Mexico City / Hugo José Suárez (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico) ; 3. Staging green spirituality in the parks of Lausanne and Geneva: a spatial approach to urban ecological festivals / Irene Becci (Université de Laussane, Switzerland) and Salomé Okoekpen ; 4. Constructing a religioscape: the case of Pushkinskaya Square in Moscow / Nadezda Rychkova (Russian State University for the Humanities, Russia) ; 5. Festivals of religions and religious festivals: Heritigized Heterotopias / Alberta Giorgi (University of Bergamo, Italy) and Mariachiara Giorda (Roma Tre University, Italy) -- Part 2. The politics of religion in urban spaces: power and symbolism in the city. 6. A bridge too far: yoga, spirituality, and contested space in the Pacific Northwest / Paul Bramadat (University of Victoria, Canada) ; 7. "It's the first Sukkah since the Inquisition!": Jewish celebrations in public spaces in Barcelona / Julia Martínez-Ariño (University of Groningen, the Netherlands) ; 8. Spatial discourses of sanctity as means of struggle and empowerment in a contested city / Nimrod Luz (Kinneret College on the Sea of Galilee, Israel) ; 9. Decoding strategic secularism in Madrid: religion as ambience in three scenarios / Monica Cornejo-Valle (Universidad Complutense Madrid, Spain) -- Part 3. Public religious rituals, urban transcendence and embodied spirituality. 10. Urbi et Orbi: Pope Benedict's visit to Berlin and the emplacement of communicative events / Hubert Knoblauch (TU Berlin, Germany) ; 11. Turning spirituality into a public event: the popularization of collective meditations and mindfulness marches in the urban space / Mar Griera (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain), Anna Clot-Garrell (Universitat de Barcelona, Spain) ; 12. God's warriors: embodying Evangelical Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in Rio de Janeiro / (Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID), Switzerland) ; 13. Feeling sufis: an essay on intimate religion in Berlin, Omar Kasmani (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany) ; 14. Epilogue / Sophie Watson (The Open University, UK).

Over long periods, interdisciplinary debates in urban studies on the relationships between religion and urban space were influenced by mainstream versions of modernization theory. These were based on the binary of urban modernity and nonurban (religious) tradition. However, historical urban research has shown that cities were also more often sites of religious innovation. Inspired by Jennifer Robinson's understanding of cities as "ordinary" sites of sociality, with this special issue we contribute to this vibrant debate on religion and urbanism. The articles in it examine the role of places of worship as spatial and urban projects and address the following questions: How do religious actors become spatial entrepreneurs whose spatial projects shape cities? Which religiously motivated social and material forms emerge in cities? What are the practices and regimes that contribute to the spatialization of religion? How does the nature of places of worship alter and adapt to rapidly changing urban environments? And what are the consequences of religious buildings and other material forms for the social reality of cities? We argue that in contrast to former periods, when religious buildings were considered and constructed as authoritative buildings, these buildings are now much more fluid. Broad social transformations profoundly changed the roles played by and the social meanings attributed to them. Religious buildings and informal religious sites are not mere static architectural structures but bring with them a wide variety of spatial, economic, political, affective, and spiritual investments which make their construction, presence, and transformation a slippery object for urban planning logics and experts.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the reformulation of the place and role of religion in Spanish public institutions after the constitutional disestablishment of the Catholic Church and religious diversification of society. Drawing upon qualitative fieldwork in six Spanish prisons, we argue that there is a process of the realignment of forces between the religious groups that provide services in such institutions, the Catholic Church adopting an attitude in between adaptation and subtle resistance to the loss of a number of its previous prerogatives. This incomplete demonopolisation of public organisations can be explained as the result of two opposing forces: (a) convergence towards the European standards of accommodation of religious diversity; and (b) Catholic resistance to the loss of established advantages.