Overall the research has amounted to my conceptualization of the intersections of religion, sovereign orders, and bottom-up authority as "theopolitical patchworks" (Oosterbaan forthcoming). In my inaugural lecture during which I stated the preliminary results of the SACRASEC research project, I explained how it is most fruitful to see order as the effect of a patchwork of partial sovereignties. Patchwork signals the provisional and material/symbolic character of order-making practices, and it highlights how the combination of apparently distinct elements can produce one relatively stable fabric. I also highlighted that patchwork sovereignty is influenced by the diversity of religious traditions within secularist states that attempt to regulate religion yet do so in historically specific manners - often privileging certain traditions over others. The forthcoming and already published scholarly works show how urban theopolitical patchworks are sustained by embodied/lived religious traditions in relation to the material symbolic manifestations of such traditions. Orthodoxy and orthopraxy influence such traditions in conjunction with formal governmental institutions but practitioners also innovate tradtions at the crossroads of security practices and search for sustainable livelihoods. In dense urban areas with religious diversity that may generate competition and even conflict between religious communities.
SACRASEC has opened up new research directions at the crossraods of these interconnected domains:
1) The intersection of religion and ontological security (Giddens 1984) in contexts of social transformation. Taking as a starting point the assumption that lived religion (McGuire 2008) is embedded in life-worlds that expose people to all kinds of contemporary challenges, vulnerabilities, and social, environmental, economic, and political risks (Beck 2009), this intersection focuses on what Ashforth (1998) called ‘spiritual insecurity’ (see also Fisher and Leonardi 2021);
2) The intersection of religion and contemporary political orders at large. Research tied to this conjunction focuses on political theologies (de Vries 2006) as they become manifest in political projects and forms of authority: nationalist ideologies, state-building practices, multinational (religious) corporations, cultural heritage projects, etcetera;
3) The intersection between religion and securitization. Departing from a critical acceptance of securitization theory (see also Holbraad and Pedersen 2012), this intersection investigates and analyzes in what ways religion influences and is influenced by the current tendency to define local, national and global politics in terms of security and security threats (Buzan et al. 1998). Research analyzes when and how religious ideologies and practices legitimate or contest extra-ordinary political interventions in the name of ‘security’.
4) The intersections of religion and conflict. This junction concerns mainly the connections between religion and violence, protection, justice, human rights, vigilantism, disputes, as they play out in situations of socio-political change, upheaval or crises (see, for instance: Jensen and Buur 2004; Benda-Beckmann et al. 2013; Kirsch and Turner 2009).
