Migration does not take place in a vacuum, nor is the formation of communities thereof a mere collection of individuals; particularly when taking into account one of the main transferrable cultural determinants of identity and self-perception, i.e. group religiosity. The latter makes its aesthetic manifestation in the public sphere and hence, migration gives rise to religioscapes, which are identifiable by their visible markers in the form of architecture and religious art. The same applies to the Greek-Orthodox migrant communities of Germany and Great Britain. Both were established in the mid-twentieth century when the main bulk of their demographic presence in the corresponding countries took place. The formation of their communities occurred clearly before globality ushered in the contemporary, parallel, glocal, translocal and cultural relativisation that is facilitated by increased mobility and advanced means of communication. Yet, this paper argues that both the glocal and translocal conceptual frameworks apply to the case studies of interest. Evidence of this is particularly traceable in their corresponding religioscapes’ markers, which are permeated by aesthetic priorities and main influences, emergent patterns of predominant featured themes and tendencies that attest to glocality and translocality. Notably, not only are their places of worship containers of their immortalized narratives, they also contribute to the perpetuation of their distinct mutability. This phenomenon of aesthetic adaptation in accordance with the accumulated social experience, highlights the emergent patterns of a glocal and translocal sense of being and belonging that gave rise to the distinct hybrid identity amalgams thereof.
The Levant has diachronically been a highly contested region in terms of rights and entitlement, and, ultimately, in terms of sovereignty over territory. This is not a new phenomenon, particularly in a region that is laden with history. Religion has been, and still is, central in the demarcation and distinction of territorial custodianship, administration, and ownership, as it codetermines the terms and limits of boundaries by way of materiality in the public sphere. Antitheses and frictions are frequent over disputed territories and spatialities, where religioscapes overlap or intersect in a non-harmonious fashion. Especially at times of political unrest, religion, as a value system, as cultural heritage and as a collective identifier of self-perception, has a central role in the signification of (pre)dominance over territory. This holds true particularly for the Christian minorities in the Levant, with immediate consequences on their religious sites and their overall religiocultural heritage. In this light, I argue that this issue deserves extensive further study, to better understand and explain the complex georeligious landscape in the region, and specifically the place of Christianity therein by way of its materiality, given that the latter is mutatis mutandis under threat.
This paper aims to introduce an alternative research approach in dealing with migrant communities as religioscapes, from the perspective of religious aesthetic. Namely, it focuses on the Greek and Greek-Cypriot migrant communities in Germany and Great Britain and examines their religiocultural symbolic constellations in the public sphere, particularly, those which illustrate aspects of their self-perception and migration narratives. In both cases churches serve as arks of culture and identity. In the lapse of time, community and church, being closely knit, jointly constructed their migrant narratives of de- and re-territorialisation, cultural adaptation and hybridisation, essentially their own distinct sense of being and belonging. Therefore, one observes the phenomenon of interwoven migrant and church narratives. The particularities of these constantly under construction identities are manifest in the architectural, hagiographical/iconographical themes, aesthetics and concepts of their churches. It is typical, however, of the Byzantine iconographic tradition to include and demonstrate the socio-political conditions of its time and place; and, those visual manifestations, as part of a sociocultural reality, possess a contextual dimension in their symbolic content, while being an act and a medium of communication in their own right. It is therefore feasible to decode their aforementioned content and articulate the narrative therein.
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