The Affective Geographies of Religion: 'Spirit' and Transformations in Evangelical Christianity.

The proposed project focuses on the role of the affective experience of spirituality in understanding the conditions and consequences of the shift in the West from
institutionalised religion to personal spirituality. Alongside a broader valorisation of 'spirituality' as central to well-being, there has been a generational and cultural shift in
spiritual practices in Christianity - principally a valorisation of the bodily experience of 'spirit'. Little, however, is known about the relation between these 'other worldly'
experiences - the sensing of 'signs and miracles' - and how spirituality plays a role in people's everyday lives. Through a case study of a U.S. mega-Church, the project will track 'spirit' as an affective, productive and transformative force that constitutes the Evangelical Christian experience. As such, it contributes to wider debates in geography and the social sciences in two ways. First, it will examine how transformations in the form of and practice of religion are connected to lived experience, and specifically transformations in affective or emotional life. Second, and drawing on a range of nonrepresentational theories, it will explore how human geographers and other social scientists can make room in their accounts of the world for seemingly immaterial but nevertheless deeply consequential dimensions of experience such as 'spirit'. Therefore, in addition to the substantive focus on evangelical Christianity, the project will explore wider issues of the conduct of social analysis and explanation in what has been claimed to be a 'post-secular' moment.