Center for Religion and Cities (CRC)

The Center for Religion and Cities (CRC) is housed within Morgan State University, an HBCU founded in 1867 as a Bible College to train African American clergy and now designated as Maryland’s “Preeminent Public Urban Research University.” The Center launched in 2018 with generous support from The Henry Luce Foundation and from The James H. Gilliam Jr. College of Liberal Arts, The School of Architecture and Planning, and The Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies. Growing from Morgan’s commitment to racial justice in the city of Baltimore and beyond, our collaborative work with BIPOC students, community leaders, and others - grows from an ecological understanding of religion and cities to engage pressing issues of our times.

Philosophical and religious inquiry have developed alongside and through ecological relationships with cities. This inquiry has often accomplished the vital work of critiquing inequities and imagining better futures, i.e. of growing, sharing, and bringing to life visions for a beloved community - for a more just city. Conversely, the city provides a pull and context for this type of organized inquiry and shapes the lived experiences that inform religious and moral organization. It is projected that by 2050, more than two-thirds of the world’s population will live in urban areas, that growth in cities is primarily driven by the prospect of better living standards, and that nevertheless, about 1-in-3 people in urban areas globally live in substandard conditions. The projected growth of urban populations is largely animated by visions of cities as potential solutions to climate change, limited resources, demographic shifts and the potential of bringing together people and ways of life of different backgrounds to be in community. These utopian visions are complicated by the history of residential racial segregation in the US and the resulting urban divestment within BIPOC neighborhoods. The importance of religion and cities work will continue to grow with the rise of religious nones, the changing political and religious landscape in the US, and new investments into urban development and growth. The CRC is prepared to convene diverse stakeholders to reflect on the architectural and communal forms that religion takes in urban areas; on shuttered, converted, and “storefront” churches as well as in household, commercial, museums and other cultural practices. The contingencies and spaces of urban life are sculpting the shape of religious authority, of spaces of ritual practice, and consequently, of our sense of community - of the city - that work with and against institutionalized forms. The historical specificities of cities in the US are further complicated by transnational movements, including a predicted stagnation in the global population that will require reconceptualizations of community, of the good life, and of the vital wisdom necessary to support these. For better or worse, religious, spiritual, and other moral worldviews have been central to the development of our visions for a good life within cities. A justice oriented, collaborative, and caring ecological approach to religion and cities will be needed to ensure the survival and thriving of our communities within urban environments.

The CRC is an inclusive, open, affirming collective of BIPOC scholars, students, community leaders and other partners dedicated to racial justice and the dismantling white settler colonialism, racial capitalism, and hetero-patriarchy. Along with our allies, we maintain that “no one of us can be free until everybody's free.” We thus seek to grow ethical allyships with those who are aligned with our politics through careful listening and supportive, caring, and collaborative work.