This paper will analyze the relationship between religion and geography, including the intersection of religion and intangible spaces such as the political and social, from pre-history into modernity. 

In the video, "The Big Story: Origins of Religion", Yathish Dhavala outlines how humans created the first gods. "People correctly associated their own movement with their will, and they believed that all movement was the product of will," they explain. That is to say, they attributed the motion of the ocean, the sun and moon, and even the growth of plants to a will or spirit within each of these. Stone Age people viewed the world as full of spirits, or gods. They created stories to define the world surrounding them in terms they could understand; phenomena that disturbed the natural order they were used to were described as "the work of a demon spirit". But these stories were "told and accepted without recognition of a difference between fact and fantasy", birthing the faith people tend to have in religion today.

Considering their similar origins, it's not surprising that several religious story arcs are found to be repetitive throughout the world. One of them is the idea of paradise; which can be interpreted as the world before being tainted by sin or the place where the virtuous dead abide. Some examples would be the Abrahamic Garden of Eden, the Greek Elysian Fields, the Egyptian Aaru, the Celtic Fortunate Isle of Mag Mell, amongst others.  Another are flood myths, which can be found in the Mesopotamian flood stories, the Genesis, Hindu texts from India, as well as Greek, Norse, Maya, Muisca and Native American mythologies. These often are the act of a deity seeking divine retribution, and contain a human hero. A third case would be that of the dying-and-rising god or the resurrection deity such as the Egyptian Osiris, Greek Dionysus and Persephone, who dies and comes back to life every year to symbolize the vegetation cycle, as well as Jesus Christ. 

Some even argue that religions as a whole are based on sun worship or the solar cycles. A common point in such an argument is that if a religion is based on a resurrection deity, as Christianity is, the birth represents the sunrise, the death is the sunset, then the resurrection is the sunset, again. Great structures built by ancient civilizations also point directly to sun worship, for example Stonehenge in the UK, the pyramids in Egypt and in Mexico, and, some say, the temple complex Karnak on the Nile. 

"In Egyptian worship, Horus is the rising sun, Ra is the noon sun and then Osiris (god of the dead) is the dying or setting sun" (Ahmad, 1). There are commentators who "even link Horus, Ra and Osiris with the Christian Trinity concept" (Ahmad, 1). Important Egyptian figures were depicted as having a sun on their heads, and Christian ones, too, are shown with solar halos behind them. This is due, though, to the fact that Christians had to assimilate into the cultures in which they were living. They began to associate Jesus with the Roman God Sol Invictus, which led to the use of the halo and the adoption of the holy day December 25th as the key date for Christianity when it was just the day of the winter solstice 2000 years ago. 

Despite all of this, the influence of the sun could also be explained as that whoever understood the solar cycles was able to predict seasonal changes, lead the masses and, therefore, secure power. After all, there are religions that are not linked to sun worship, for example, Islam. There is a very specific passage in the Qur'an, a central religious text of Islam, in which Abraham looks up to the heavens in search of God -- demonstrating how typical it is for humans to turn to the cosmos in their search for meaning -- , but dismissed the stars, the moon, and even the sun because they disappeared at the end of the day while his god was omnipresent. 

Comparing mythologies to find similarities like this is called comparative mythology. It can be used for a variety of academic purposes, including tracing the development of cultures and religions as well as supporting psychological theories. Amanda Norsker, however, upon analyzing three different flood myths and finding them so similar, published "Genesis 6,5-19,17: A Rewritten Babylonian Flood Myth". The basic argument in this article is that Genesis 6,5-19,17 is a rewriting of Gilgamesh XI, which, in turn, is a rewriting of Atra-hasis III. This is why, while Atrahasis and Genesis share only what they both share with Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh shares different aspects with each of them. 

The differences in the three plots can also be explained simply; it is because the gods in the Babylonian myths only created humans to work for them, while Yahweh, the god from Genesis, made them in his image and told them to "be many and fill the earth" (Norsker, 57). The attitudes of the respective gods are clearly different, leading to different interpretations of the same events. Even though they all regret sending the floods, in Atra-hasis III, it only happens once they smell the sacrifice offered to them by the survivors, causing repentance because, without humans to plow their fields, they had become hungry. In Genesis, it is also after smelling the sacrifice that Yahweh becomes regretful, but hunger is no longer mentioned. The motif fades from one text to the other, it "is an outspoken and and dominating theme in Atra-hasis; it is more subtle and not very obvious in Gilgamesh and, finally, in Genesis it is almost undetectable and not noticeable without knowledge of the parallels in the Babylonian myths, which provide the context" (Norsker, 58). 

Christian texts were not the only ones influenced by the Near East, for, as Carolina Lopez-Ruiz points out in the article "Greek and Canaanite Mythologies: Zeus, Baal, and their Rivals", so was Greek mythology. The Greek crafted very specific relationships between their gods, reflecting the way that they believed the universe interacted with itself and about the human condition. Lopez also points out that in their myths, there are several instances in which Zeus's power is threatened, just like in the myths surrounding Baal and his ascension to power. 

Lopez argues that the difference between these teetering images and the steadfast power of gods in religions such as Christianity is due to the respective peoples' views on kingship. Whereas Christians might view their ruler as supreme and unyielding, the Canaanites and Greek must have had much more vulnerable, human images of theirs. They also state that "the cultural makeup of the Greek-speaking world was shaped much more by the West Asiatic and North African cultures that surrounded it in historical times than by its prehistoric Indo-European past" (Lopez-Ruiz, 2). Both of these points are directly tied back to geographies of religion. The first shows how the concept a society has of their government and social hierarchy directly reflects on the concept that they have of deities. The second, raises the question of whether the influence of neighboring cultures is more powerful than the actual historical context a civilization thrives in. 

Given that in both examples presented, those of the Atrahasis-Gilgamesh-Genesis flood myths and the Greek-Canaanite "teetering" gods, the similarities stem the exposure to societies in their vicinity, there is no denying that neighboring cultures have an impact on local beliefs. However, the sample space mentioned is too small to draw comparisons from, seeing as how the historical impact isn't discussed. 

Other social phenomena such as migration, conquest, and globalization also shaped the religions we know today. Unmistakable cases of this can be found many times over within the history of Christianity, which is full of movements almost completely based on forceful conversion. This would include the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the colonization of America. 

While the motives behind the Crusades, a series of military campaigns ordered by the Pope in the late 11th century, lean heavily towards the political, some conquered peoples, such as the Livonian and Lithuanian, were converted. The Inquisition, on the other hand, focused on finding and punishing heretics, including non-Catholic Christians, and spanned from witch trials all the way into the 19th century. The Spanish Inquisition not only encompassed the Reconquista, or re-conquest, of Spain from Muslim rule, but also a wave of violent anti-Judaism and a targeting of forced converts from Islam, suspect of continuing to adhere to their previous beliefs. At the end of the 15th century, all Jews who hadn't converted were even expelled from Spain. The Inquisition even reached into America, which had been converted by the Spanish conquistadors that enslaved its people, destroying not only their societies but their cultures, as well. 

In every such case, the confrontation between two sets of beliefs, the local and the foreign, is inevitable. Sam White writes about the relationship between the Native Americans and the colonists as they interacted during the Little Ice Age, a period of cooling extending from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, in his article, "'Shewing the difference betweene their conjuration, and our invocation on the name of God for rayne': Weather, Prayer, and Magic in Early American Encounters". 

The Little Ice Age left the Native Americans vulnerable and in a drought right about the time in which the Europeans arrived in America. There are several accounts of interactions centered around the invocation of rain; "in about half of the narratives Europeans claimed Indians asked them to pray for better weather, while in most of the rest the colonists or missionaries initiated some contest between rituals to predict or control the weather" (White, 35). This however, gave rise to a series of problems, including the generation of mutual suspicions of witchcraft. These events prove how the state of the environment affects how cultures and religions interact and, especially when originally meeting, shape the image they have of each other permanently. 

Today, it is impossible to live in a large city without experiencing diversity in many forms. However, there are still people in isolated communities that know nothing but their own culture and beliefs. This is how the whole world used to be before the development of communication methods and modes of transportation. This section of the paper was meant to give the reader a brief, by no means all encompassing, summary of how single groups founded their own beliefs and, upon encountering other groups and building off of each other, created the religions we know today. 

The analysis of studies of geographies of religion can be begun by looking at the work of  Kim Knott, who strives "to develop a spatial methodology in order to examine religion in Western modernity" (Knott, 1) in the book, "The Location of Religion: A Spatial Analysis". By not specifying what type of location they are referring to, they keep the freedom of exploring not only geographical spaces but social institutions and intangible spaces, as well. As Knott testifies, it is especially important to look at this relationship in many different scales, be it locally or globally, but using the same methodology. This leads us to the article, "Faith and suburbia: secularisation, modernity, and the changing geographies of religion in London's suburbs" by Claire Dwyer, David Gilbert, and Bindi Shah.

 This article argues the incongruity of the new religious landscape of twenty-first century London and the common opinion of suburbia as a hub of modernization, materialism, and secularization. Basically, ever since industrialization, which led to industrial urbanization, the suburbs have been considered almost a "godless" place, the epitome of secularization, so to say. Yet, as London's religious landscape expands, places of worship increasing at a steady rate, it expands in the suburbs. 

The secularization mentioned presents itself differently in separate countries. For example, in London, it is reflected in the loss of organized Christianity, or, simply, the decline in attendance. In America, however, studies show that, while people still attend, they do it in a much more social manner, without caring as much, if at all, about the doctrine. They call this a "more socially useful church" and those who implement it "transients" (Dwyer et al, 406). 

A second argument they debunk is that of the homogeneity of suburbs. While popular culture has an image of a diverse city and "all-white" suburbs, studies show that the most religiously diverse authority in the UK was a suburb bordering London, while other suburbs trailed close behind it. Even in America, there are suburbs consisting largely of immigrants that are more integrated in transnational networks than their nearby metropolis. 

Increasing human mobilities are precisely one of the major global shifts Lily Kong says confront humanity today. The others are rapid urbanization and social inequality, a deteriorating environment, and an ageing population. Kong "[considers] the place of religion in shaping human response to these larger dynamics" (Kong, 756). Other than that, Kong also analyzes the boom in interest in geographies of religion, a topic that previously hadn't had much traction within the geographical community. They attribute this to improving of technology and the research of "unofficially sacred sites". This includes museums, schools, sacred groves, roadside shrines, media spaces, streetscapes, sites of financial practice, and home spaces. "This extension of research beyond the usual churches, temples and mosques finds common thread with scholars of religion as well" (Kong 756). 

These studies raise a series of questions ranging from the religious facets of ordinary spaces to the change in purpose that religion serves today in communities, which will surely vary depending on each community's distinct set of values, etc. 

 "From ancient times down to the present, there is found among various peoples a certain perception of that hidden power which hovers over the course of things and over the events of human history; at times some indeed have come to the recognition of a Supreme Being, or even of a Father," Pope Paul VI writes in the "Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions: Nostra Aetate". 

This definition of gods varies from the one used in this project's argument. However, even using the Catholic Church's definition of gods and religions outside their own as different peoples' manifestations of adoration for gods, it could be argued that these manifestations differ based on a spatial methodology, as well.

Kim Knott writes that "there are no data that are irrelevant for the study of religion" (Knott, 2). Similarly, there are no data that are irrelevant for the study of civilization and human development. Just as studying history allows us to better understand our past and plan for our future, understanding this relationship of geographies of religion would allow us to look at religion from a different perspective. If everyone were to understand that every religion not only strives for the same purpose, but also stems from the same origin, it is likely that cases of religious discrimination would subside. Therefore, more time and effort should be expended dissecting the relationship of religion not only with geography but with other aspects so as to prove whether or not every religion is fundamentally one in the same. 

