Regrounding the sacred: transnational religion, place making and the politics of diaspora among the Congolese in London and Atlanta

Drawing on case studies of several Congolese churches in London and Atlanta, in this article I explore the practices and strategies of religious territorialization associated with the politics of diaspora. A focus on the manifold ways of enacting and performing diasporic religious identities enables one to understand how religious actors connect spaces and temporalities to carve out spiritual and symbolic cartographies. More specifically, I analyse the particular interplay of diasporic politics, religious identity, place and history in the context of political crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The transnational scope of the groups studied – Catholics, Kimbanguists and Pentecostals – significantly shapes their diasporic religious experience as they are embedded in larger polycentric social fields and ‘sacredscapes’ within which people, money, ideas, images, objects or values circulate. I also link the individual and collective experiences of diasporic religion to the shaping role of power relations and conflicts within wider transnational social fields.