The Power of Place

The cost-of-living crisis in the United Kingdom has exacerbated an already fraught housing situation, meaning that the stability of a consistent place to live is now a privilege many cannot afford. House prices and private rental markets have risen far beyond the average wage. Limited social housing stock means families find themselves on waiting lists with no hope of securing a suitable place to live. Local journalism highlights the stories of long-standing communities forced to leave their homes due to new housing developments, fearful of whether they will be able to return. These stories speak not simply of bricks and mortar but of history, culture, identity, social networks, emotional ties, a sense of community and belonging to a place. A secure home facilitates stable education, consistent work, access to local health services, social relationships and participation in a religious community – a multiplicity of qualities that inform human flourishing and depend upon the stability of one’s local physical environment. Moreover, we are currently witnessing in the UK increasingly divisive and violent rhetoric against migrants and refugees, demonstrating the ways supposed threats to place are a central concern for local communities.

While such discourse is prominent in our current political and social imagination, parts of the church likewise understand this milieu to be a central moment in our times that demands a contribution. During the Covid-19 pandemic, an ecumenical conversation between churches in Britain led to the publication of three letters inviting churches to seek the common good in their local communities.Footnote ² In a context of globalisation, centralisation and increasing wealth and power held in the hands of the few, these letters challenge churches to ‘uphold and defend fellow local institutions’ so that together they can sustain ‘belonging, place and meaning’ via the safeguarding of creation itself and through the revival of human relationships grounded upon love at the local level.Footnote ³ Their belief ‘is that God is leading us to deepen our relationship with people, and with place’.Footnote ⁴ Their goal is to create a ‘relational, place-based civic politics [which] restores power and responsibility to communities’.Footnote ⁵ Such civic work, in partnership with the church, could, for example, form associations around a piece of land or a building to provide essential amenities such as new homes or preserve green spaces for place-based social relationships. Such a vision demonstrates the role of Christianity facilitating creaturely flourishing via social relationships.

To articulate this theologically, we might turn to a doctrine of creation that envisions creaturely life lived in all its fullness in communion with the living God.Footnote ⁶ As creatures of the living God, we are invited to accept our limitations. Unlike God, who is not in need of anything or anyone, creatures are dependent on one another and on God for our very existence. To refuse this dependence is idolatry, seeking to be sicut Deus. Footnote ⁷ Rather than accept the creaturely limitations that invite us into relationships of healthy mutuality, this idolatry leaves us standing alone and isolated from the good gifts God provides. In our relationship with God our Creator, we celebrate a love that has brought us into being, not because God needed us, but because God freely chose to create us as recipients of God’s divine love. In our relationships with fellow creatures, we accept our need of one another to grow and tend the earth together for the purposes of shelter and food production; to care for and protect the vulnerable so that every creature may flourish; to receive life from one another in nutrient cycles that are harmonised for each other’s survival; to offer companionship, friendship and community so that no one remains alone; and to embrace the beauty of creaturely life and celebrate its richness, vitality and diversity.

While the creaturely life envisioned here may be a universal claim for every creature found within God’s creation, intrinsic to it is the physical limitations of such a life. We are embodied creatures, not transient spirits, who live particular lives in particular settings. For human creatures especially, physical limitation is an aspect of our creatureliness we seem to no longer celebrate as a good gift from our Creator but fight against. While the global currents of migration and commerce and the ubiquity of automobiles and cheap air travel have led to a society previous generations could not have fathomed, nevertheless, our finitude binds us to places: the places we have come from, travel through and will be our final resting place. Bodies reside in physical places. Within these particular places, we form particular connections of dependence on local services, food chains, neighbours and fellow creatures, creating networks and communities that enhance our life together. Theological anthropology has seen a necessary turn to the body, seen in important works such as M. Shawn Copeland’s Embodied Flesh: Body, Race and Being that rightly challenge Christian thought and practices that have harmed certain bodies, especially Black bodies, while privileging others, undermining the bodily reality of human life and Christian faith.Footnote ⁸ Yet, bodies dwell in physical places, and these threads to place are often absent from our theological discourse.

An early contributor to a discussion of place within theology is seen in a piece by Oliver O’Donovan, who seeks to employ theological resources to ‘restore a just appreciation of the role of place within political experience[.]’Footnote ⁹ O’Donovan helps define what exactly we mean by ‘place’ when he writes:

I disagree that any space is ever ‘dead’; instead, it is always made alive by the more-than-human creation and to be celebrated in its creaturely glory. Willie James Jennings has critiqued the idea of perceiving land as ‘empty space’ rather than a possible site of communion with fellow creatures.Footnote ¹¹ An understanding of creation as empty was the ground upon which a colonial paradigm was built which perceived land and bodies as possessions to exploit for economic profit. This same logic now resides within our ongoing exploitative and technological-driven paradigm. Moreover, Jennings has argued that the sins of racism and colonialism grew from a diseased relationship to the earth that both dismissed humanity’s dependence on the ground while at the same time facilitated nationalistic renderings of Christian faith bound to land understood as possession.Footnote ¹² I explicate these themes in my own articulation of a theology of land and place. In this work, I argue for a return to the local and the parish as a means of resistance against the segregating power of whiteness that functions territorially, drawing imaginary lines through bodies and land, preventing connection and the sharing of ways of life. By celebrating creaturely ties to place in all their diversity – and importantly beyond the lines of nation and private property – those who have been imagined apart can find in local places communities that both recognise local identity while allowing for its ongoing transformation so every creature may find safety, home and belonging.Footnote ¹³

O’Donovan, nevertheless, captures the enduring human relationship to space that binds together the physical landscape and cultural practices of a particular group to form distinct places of community and belonging. Perhaps Hannah Malcolm’s definition is more helpful when she describes ‘place’ as ‘a kind of located attention, made through speaking about a space together’.Footnote ¹⁴ Theologies of place can offer a particular vision of an appropriate human relating to a place. While I am mindful of idolatrous claims to place that ‘other’ and exclude, as well as certain theologies of place that could promote Christian nationalism, it is nevertheless important to acknowledge the intrinsic bonds to place that are the substance of human life. Theologies of place recognise the ways God meets us not in the abstract but in the particularity of the places we encounter and call home. Considering place theologically can help facilitate conversations regarding human attachment to place, both in its unhealthy and healthy manifestations.

The Anglican theological tradition has a particular interest in place, given its historic model of church provision that is geographically constituted. In the last twenty-five years, Christian theologies of place have emerged in the United Kingdom as a distinct area of study within theology, primarily through the writings of Anglican theologians.Footnote ¹⁵ This new research, including my own previous work, argues for the theological significance of place, rooted in a biblical interpretation that demonstrates the importance of place in scripture for human identity, creation care and Christian belief and practice.

John Inge offers one of the first comprehensive theologies of place from England, providing a thoroughly scriptural justification that encompasses the centrality of certain places for the activity of God in the Old Testament (such as Mount Sinai and the Temple), the celebration of materiality seen in the New Testament through the incarnation which expands the possibilities of encounter with God to occur in every place and Christian eschatological hope that is framed as a new place, the heavenly city.Footnote ¹⁶ Inge then goes on to propose a sacramental theology of place. He does not describe a general principle of the world as naturally sacramental. Instead, he speaks of sacramental events or encounters. In such encounters, God’s concrete engagement with the world becomes visible in a particular place, which leads to the marking of a holy place in response to God’s initiative. In this framework certain places become visible signs of God’s self-revelation to creation, imbuing such places with a story of God’s activity that is retold to fellow believers, which encourages others to visit expectant they will encounter the living God.Footnote ¹⁷ Inge writes:

Inge moves to propose that in England, we could view our church buildings in this way, cherishing our holy places as a ‘sacred geography’ that points to God’s story with place and people.Footnote ¹⁹

In Parish: An Anglican Theology of Place, Andrew Rumsey proposes a different type of theology of place, which I describe as geographical. Rumsey is less interested in church buildings and holy places but in how Christians might understand Christ’s work of holding all things together (Colossians 1:17) in the concrete reality of their local communities.Footnote ²⁰ This broadens the focus to encompass the ground of the parish as well as the church building. Rumsey argues that ‘the Anglican parish is clearly a fundamental way of seeing not just place, but “Christ in our place”.’Footnote ²¹ Such a theology moves Christ’s reconciling work from the abstract to the particular so that every place is valued Christologically in a specific and concrete manner. In turn, it offers a social ethic conceived spatially in which the Christian vocation to love our neighbour can be realised in the concreteness of the parish.Footnote ²² Alongside Rumsey, theologians such as Michael Northcott, Hannah Malcolm and I offer geographical theologies of place to propose a ‘parochial ecology’ that challenges the church to incorporate the needs of local communities into their patterns of prayer, worship and service, as well as to explore how churches might partner with other organisations to meet the local needs of every creature in the parish.Footnote ²³

Malcolm and I are especially attentive to those who have been historically marginalised or ignored by the church so that theologies of place do not become a way to cement exclusionary behaviours. Acknowledging the diverse experiences of the same place, Malcolm writes:

Malcolm proposes a theology of naming as a model for creaturely belonging to place, proposing practices of public prayer in local churches that are able to reimagine local place narratives through those whom they chose to include in their petitions and thanksgivings. Mirrored on Christ’s own earthly ministry, Malcolm contends that when

Transformed sight brings an attentiveness to local needs that might otherwise be unrecognised, challenging dominant perceptions and narratives to create the possibility of local belonging that is hospitable to the diversity of God’s creatures.Footnote ²⁶

The theological work I have presented here offers a vision of creaturely life that is attentive to bonds to local places. These claims are not reserved solely for Christians but make a claim about every creature under heaven. Nevertheless, this theological vision is offered within a Christian paradigm, providing Christians a means to understand the lived experience of their faith and life as well as a vocation to live as place-centred people in their communities – both their communities of faith and the wider communities of which they are a part – witnessing to a way of life that can nourish creaturely flourishing for themselves and others. Despite an important and needed shift toward embodied and contextual theologies, as Malcolm notes, a theological interest in place ‘remains somewhat marginal’.Footnote ²⁷ However, the social, economic and political context of the United Kingdom that I briefly outlined above highlights the pressing need to think robustly and deeply concerning place and the possible role of the church to contribute to this ongoing conversation.

For theologians and church ministers to recognise the importance of questions concerning place, the research of other disciplines is required. The method of science-engaged theology, another very new discipline within theology, could be useful here. The basic principle of the discipline is that ‘whenever theologians make claims about created, empirical realities, they should incorporate the insights of empirical investigation into their analysis’.Footnote ²⁸ Moreover, Perry and Leidenhag contend that science-engaged theology, ‘as theology, is a form of faith seeking understanding. … [It] starts with theological questions on which empirical studies may shed some light’.Footnote ²⁹ Having begun with theological questions about place, are there specific empirical studies that could bring new insight to theological thinking concerning place? Perry and Leidenhag stress that science-engaged theology must be highly specific, engaging sub-disciplines within theology and science.Footnote ³⁰ With this in mind, I offer a form of science-engaged theology in what follows by drawing on the scientific insights of psychologists of religion who attend to place. This discipline of psychology demonstrates and explicates the significance of place for humans, investigating the nature and presentation of human ties to place with a particular focus on religious groups. This is a fitting sub-discipline to help inform a theology of place. Moreover, in surveying briefly here the Anglican tradition in place in the UK, I have both limited the scope of my interdisciplinary engagement and additionally organised the theological contributions into two models: sacramental theologies of place and geographical theologies of place. It is these two models I shall take forward for my engagement between theology and psychology.

Place within the Psychology of Religion

Psychology is the ‘scientific study of human thought and behavior’.Footnote ³¹ Social psychology is a significant subfield within psychology concerning the ‘nature of our thought about others and how to interact with them, our identities as social beings, and how groups of humans form and engage each other’.Footnote ³² While the nature of our embodied existence as human beings within specific physical settings is taken as given for day-to-day life, the connections between the physical environment and social psychological processes are an underdeveloped area of research within the field of social psychology. Areas of study in social psychology concerning human well-being centre primarily on cognitive mental processes, largely ignoring the impact of the natural and built environment. Benjamin Meagher, analysing the theoretical assumptions behind this omission, writes, ‘The underlying belief that internal mental processes are what psychological activity itself is implies that the external world is of minimal importance or only incidentally relevant to the topic of interest’.Footnote ³³ On the contrary, Meagher’s paper demonstrates the ways in which the physical environment is much more than incidental but critical to social psychological processes, concluding his article with a call for further research that attends to the impact of physical settings in social psychology studies. As we have seen with theology, the influence of place on human beings is likewise a marginal area of scientific study within social psychology. This demonstrates how together theology and social psychology can strengthen each other’s proposals concerning the need to attend to place.

Psychology of religion, a subfield of social psychology, has begun to explore the importance of place for religious life and spirituality.Footnote ³⁴ Acknowledging the tension between faith in an incorporeal being that is practised bodily in physical settings, psychologists Victor Counted, Benjamin Meagher and Richard Cowden write: ‘Although spirituality is often viewed as an ethereal, almost other-worldly concept, one’s practice of faith is nevertheless embedded within places, and the ties that people have to particular places are often referred to as spiritual’.Footnote ³⁵ They note how research within their discipline has ‘revealed that spirituality is associated with strong feelings of connection and commitment to a place that is meaningful to the individual’.Footnote ³⁶

Within this area of work the predominant focus is on the interplay between religion, place and human health and well-being. For example, in the introductory chapter to Place, Spirituality, and Well-Being Counted and others write:

Within these scientific studies, place and its accompanying social relationships are clearly understood as consequential for human health, happiness and resilience. This provides a driving force to explore this dynamic within religious settings, particularly when positive connections to place have been shown to lead to greater quality of life.Footnote ³⁸ Furthermore, Counted and others write:

In one study, Meagher tests this hypothesis through collecting empirical data from Reformed Christians in western Michigan in the United States. While religious experiences, ranging from emotionally intense to more contemplative, are more likely to happen in religious settings, Meagher’s study demonstrates that ‘these experiences are even more likely within a religious setting to which one is strongly attached’.Footnote ⁴⁰ In other words, it is not simply the context of a church building that is significant for Christian life, but that the individual has a significant place-bond to a particular church building. Furthermore, another recent scientific study presents findings consistent with this previous work, suggesting that a ‘strong emotional bond with a higher power often co-occurs with a strong emotional bond with the place in which that higher power is worshiped[.]’Footnote ⁴¹ The research of psychologists of religion introduced here indicates how empirical studies substantiate my theological claims regarding the importance of positive ties to place for human well-being and meaningful life.

A Psychological Model of Place Attachment

Underpinning much of this recent work on spiritual ties to place in social psychology and psychology of religion is a particular model for understanding the human-place bond described as ‘place attachment’. Predominantly, ‘researchers portray place attachment as a multifaceted concept that characterizes the bonding between individuals and their important places’.Footnote ⁴² Amid a diversity of definitions in the literature, psychologists Leila Scannell and Robert Gifford published in 2010 a tripartite organising framework to conceptualise place attachment as three-dimensional, encompassing person (individual and group), psychological process and place (social and physical) dimensions.Footnote ⁴³

The first dimension in Scannell and Gifford’s framework is the person or actor: who is forming the attachment relationship to a place, and is this an individual or a group? For an individual, ‘places become meaningful from personally important experiences, such as realizations, milestones (e.g., where I first met my significant other), and experiences of personal growth[.]’Footnote ⁴⁴ For a group, attachment is a shared experience that is passed on to subsequent generations and can be a means of preserving culture. Scannell and Gifford identify that place attachment can be religiously based, which can be either a collective experience shared among worshippers, as certain religious sites are considered to have sacred meaning, or an individual attachment established from a personal religious experience.Footnote ⁴⁵

The second dimension concerns how the bond is created between person and place. This is the psychological process dimension, which manifests the bond between person and place and includes three psychological aspects: place attachment as affect (an emotional connection, usually positive, to a particular place), place attachment as cognition (the ‘memories, beliefs, meaning, and knowledge’ that individuals associate with their important place, sometimes incorporating such associations into one’s self-definition) and place attachment as behaviour (attachment expressed through actions, such as proximity-maintaining behaviours.)Footnote ⁴⁶

The final dimension of the framework is the place itself, the object of the attachment. This dimension considers what the person is attached to and what are the characteristics of the place to which a bond is formed. Scannell and Gifford identify two aspects to the place dimension: a physical aspect and a social aspect. The physical aspect describes the physical features of a place to which a bond is formed, which encompasses a broad range of settings at various geographical scales, including features of the built environment and various natural environments. They propose that ‘individuals do not become directly attached to the physical features of a place, but rather to the meaning that those features represent’.Footnote ⁴⁷ However, the social aspect of the place dimension has occupied much of the research on place attachment. The social aspect concerns the social relationships facilitated by the place in question. The attachment is ‘directed toward others who live in the place rather than to aspects of the place itself’.Footnote ⁴⁸ However, the place is what guides the attachment, as it is the geographical location which connects people, rather than other factors such as lifestyle or common interests.Footnote ⁴⁹

This tripartite framework proposed by Scannell and Gifford has been utilised by psychologists of religion to inform empirical and theoretical studies of spiritual ties to place.Footnote ⁵⁰ This demonstrates the value of using the tripartite model of place attachment for interdisciplinary work. Organising my engagement between theology and psychology via this framework will enable connections and sites of tension to emerge, as well as identifying areas that require further research within both psychology and theology.

A Psychology-Engaged Theology of Place

In what follows, I will follow the structure of the tripartite organising framework of place attachment to offer a psychology-engaged theology of place, bringing each dimension of the tripartite framework into conversation with my two theological models: sacramental theologies of place and geographical theologies of place. However, it seems sensible to first identify the object of attachment to facilitate the conversation that follows. I will therefore begin with the place dimension, which includes both a physical and a social aspect, before moving on to the person dimension and finally the psychological process dimension of the tripartite framework.

Beginning with the physical aspect of the place dimension, in sacramental theologies of place the holy places identified comprised features of the built and natural environment. In the first category, we could identify as potential holy places cathedrals, churches, chapels, churchyards, labyrinths, abbey ruins, wells connected to a Christian saint and retreat houses. In the second category, natural places might include wild places, islands, mountains and hills, ancient footpaths or edge places that are on the threshold between one kind of ecosystem and another. Often such natural features are associated with Christian saints who may have lived, walked upon or retreated to such places. In geographical theologies of place the places in question are a defined geographical area marked by some sort of boundary, whether physical or imagined. This defined area could be ecclesial, such as the parish or benefice, or civil, such as a hamlet, village, town or suburb.

The social aspect of the place dimension in Scannell and Gifford’s framework described a social arena that was guided by geography rather than other factors. An Anglican parish church congregation is historically determined by those residing in its parish. While in rural communities this may still be the case, in more urban areas this picture is complex with many travelling to attend a church that suits their personal preferences, whether social, cultural or theological. Nevertheless, many churches forge strong local connections both within the church congregations themselves and to the wider communities of which they are a part, facilitating social relationships across various demographic boundaries. A person could then become attached to the social aspect that is created through the different aspects of church life found within a particular worshipping community. These aspects of church life might include a sacramental mode in which Christians feel connected to other believers when worshipping in a particular place, even when those other believers are physically absent. In addition, Christians may feel attached to the social ethic of a church community which expresses the geographical mode of a church’s theology of place.

Moving next to the person dimension of the place attachment framework, the question asked is, Who is the person forming the attachment? Asking this question of our theological models, in both cases we find individuals forming attachments to places of significance, such as holy sites and defined geographical areas. In the sacramental model, the concept of certain built and natural holy sites becoming known as places of God’s revelation creates a narrative of that place that invites others to visit, expecting to meet with God. These sites can become personally meaningful as individuals encounter the living God and experience personal growth. This leads to practices of Christian pilgrimage, seen in the life of early pilgrim Egeria, who is thought to have travelled from Europe to Jerusalem between AD 381 and 384, maintained through major pilgrimage routes such as the Camino de Santiago in Spain, the Via di Francesco in Italy and the Pilgrim’s Way to the Holy Island of Lindisfarne in England and recently celebrated through the creation of new pilgrimage routes such as the Golden Valley Pilgrim Way in Hereford Diocese and the Athelstan Pilgrim Way in Bristol Diocese.Footnote ⁵¹ As well as encompassing built holy sites such as churches and cathedrals, these pilgrimage routes often encompass natural holy sites such as wild places, islands and ancient footpaths associated with particular Christian saints. The sacramental nature of such holy places recalls God’s activity and revelation within the created order.

Moreover, such practices of pilgrimage have become increasingly attractive to those who would not describe themselves as confessionally Christian but perhaps nominally Christian or ‘spiritual but not religious’.Footnote ⁵² Furthermore, in parish ministry I regularly encountered those for whom it was important to return to a specific church building or churchyard to mark a significant milestone such as a birth, wedding or death. While the relationship to God could be at times difficult to identify for the individual in question, there was certainly an enduring relationship between the person and the holy place that signified a meaningful personal experience. Such practices demonstrate how the person forming the place attachment encompasses a broad range of individuals, including Christians and non-Christians.

In the geographical model, a diversity of individual expressions of place attachment can be offered that extends beyond specific holy sites to incorporate a larger but defined geographical area such as the parish or particular local community. Here, we find individuals searching for local belonging who encompass a diversity of different backgrounds and histories. We find those seeking to love their neighbours within their local community as an outworking of their Christian faith. The person forming the attachment may be someone who has been misunderstood or unnoticed within a community or felt the need to assimilate to the dominant narrative of the place. Geographical theologies of place acknowledge the harm to such individuals, which at times has been perpetuated by the local church in exclusionary behaviours, and the need to challenge local narratives that limit who is perceived as being permitted to form a place-attachment bond to a certain geographical area.

My theological articulation of creaturely life began and remained primarily communal rather than individual in its description of creaturely relationships to place. My reflection on limitations and dependence as a creaturely good, as well as the reflections from both the sacramental and theological models of place, were explicitly relational. These theologies incorporated both humans and the more-than-human creation as well as speaking of the possibility of relationships between Christians and those of other faith traditions and none through the lens of place. Scannell and Gifford identified group place attachment as something that is passed on to subsequent generations, can be used as a means of preserving culture and could be religiously based. Many Anglican church congregations collectively establish a place attachment to local holy sites and their parish or benefice. However, there resides a tension here within Protestant theology that has been passed on to subsequent generations, resulting at times in a caution toward the place. While John Inge demonstrated the strong scriptural justification for the importance of place within the Christian narrative, during the Reformation many churches were stripped bare to reinforce that God should not be identified with a certain place. Church buildings were to be purely meeting houses to hear the Word and receive the sacraments. Religious artwork and statues were removed, walls were whitewashed and altars were stripped. Inge writes: ‘If religious buildings in the Protestant era still acted as a sign, they were … signs of absence, reinforcing the belief that God was not to be identified with any particular place’.Footnote ⁵³ Rumsey also argues that our Christological assertions about place often occur in the abstract rather than the particular.Footnote ⁵⁴ This is presumably in part a result of this Reformation heritage.

As an ordinand, having read Inge’s book at theological college, I recall expressing an interest in a theology of place to my home incumbent. He responded with the words of John 4:19–26 to argue that place was no longer significant given the universal dimensions of a Christian faith that can be celebrated in any time and location. O’Donovan likewise demonstrates how these verses from John 4 have been interpreted to stress the universal dimensions of Christian faith which must be safeguarded ‘against a relapse into the concept of a situated place of divine presence’.Footnote ⁵⁵ Both my theological models of place acknowledge the problems of idolatry in respect to built Christian heritage and geographical territory.Footnote ⁵⁶ Nevertheless, fears concerning idolatry should not result in the dismissal of the importance of place for Christian life.

Indeed, O’Donovan employs another famous passage of Scripture, the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10, which has been used to stress the universal dimensions of Christian love, to argue for the importance of place in the expression of that love. In a space characterised by its being between places – lacking a neighbourhood as the traveller looks beyond to their destination – it is here on the roadside that Jesus challenges his hearers to understand neighbourly love as conditioned not by race or tribe or religion but by closeness and proximity. O’Donovan argues that to read the parable in this light calls into question our current privileging of universalism: ‘It challenges us not to ignore that which is nearest to us, not to let the place where we are become neutralised into a mere passage that excludes neighbourly encounter’.Footnote ⁵⁷ O’Donovan moves to celebrate the church as both universal and local that replicates the universal dimension of God’s love communicated in the particularity of the incarnation. He thus argues that the

The loyalty to the local, understood in this light, gives hope to a vocation for the church that celebrates collective attachment to place as a means of Christian service and witness to its neighbours while not isolating itself from those beyond its walls who require help or bring rich blessings.

I move now to the psychological process dimension of the tripartite framework of place attachment to explore how the bond between person and place is being formed and maintained. This dimension involved three psychological aspects: affect, behaviour and cognition. Drawing upon the insights from the theologies of place I have presented above, here I will offer some reflections on how these three psychological aspects might be functioning within my two theological models, exploring each model in turn.

Within the sacramental theological model of place, it is at specific holy places, such as those named above, where a person or group may experience the bond to place as an affective one. At a particular holy place someone may have a strongly emotive experience of God’s love, forgiveness, acceptance and grace. This creates an emotional connection to the place in question that is now woven within their articulation and memory of their Christian faith journey. This emotional connection thus brings happiness when recalling or revisiting the holy place or expectancy when visiting other holy places that fellow Christians have testified to being places of encounter with the living God. However, because of the affective nature of this bond to place, a person or group may experience sadness and frustration at the physical deterioration and neglect of a holy place. There could be strong feelings of loss and grief if a church is closed or a holy site can no longer be accessed. Scannell and Gifford acknowledged that grief is ‘not limited to the death of a loved one but can emerge following the loss of an important place’.Footnote ⁵⁹ This could possibly lead to conflict and feelings of anger if others do not share the bond to the place in the same way and, therefore, are less concerned by the church closure. How church closure impacts a theology of place, especially in rural communities, is acknowledged as a needed area of exploration by Julia Curtis. My work here seeks to offer tools to navigate this important conversation.Footnote ⁶⁰

In respect to the behaviour dimension, in this model, a bond to a sacramental place might be formed through a person or group revisiting a holy place regularly. We might find Christian practices of gathered worship at holy places, both inside church buildings and outdoors at significant landmarks such as wells or atop a hill for a dawn service, as is common on Easter Sunday. These group behaviours ensure a regular proximity to the holy place, reinforcing a bond between person and place. The place-attachment bond may be expressed and sustained through behaviours of caring and tending, ensuring a holy place is clean, tidy and well-maintained. If someone is no longer able to visit a holy place regularly or to do so would be impractical because of geography and travel, they may reconstruct an aspect of that place in their home through artwork, iconography, incense or candles, thus maintaining the bond.

The cognitive dimension at play here is in some senses the sacramental theology of place model I have presented, which provides an individual and corporate memory, belief and knowledge of God’s dealings with place and thus the invitation to humans to meet God at these holy sites, both built and natural. The group behaviours of gathered worship mentioned above employ holy places to foster and preserve Christian and denominational identity and reinforce the meaning of a place as somewhere Christians can gather to encounter God. Moreover, the social aspect of the holy place which signifies the connection of the believer to other worshippers can also create meaning and identity. When exploring the cognitive dimension of place attachment, Scannell and Gifford note that ‘individuals may connect to a place in the sense that it comes to represent who they are’.Footnote ⁶¹ This would certainly be true of Christians who understand their incorporation into a particular church, which includes both a physical and social aspect, as being significant to their sense of self. In this cognitive dimension of place attachment we find a form of meaning-making which is possible because of a certain theological literacy and knowledge in respect to God’s dealings with holy places and the people who worship there. However, given the tension within Protestant theology I acknowledged above in respect to place, it is difficult to establish how well this theological schema is understood cognitively, even while the place-attachment bond might be expressed in affective and behavioural aspects which are congruent with a sacramental theology of place. Moreover, we acknowledged above how the person forming the place attachment to a specific holy place encompasses a broad range of individuals, including Christians and non-Christians. Some form of cognitive meaning-making is clearly evident, while the theological literacy and knowledge may be quite varied.

Turning to my geographical theology of place, a bond to a defined geographical area, in which a person’s home and church might be situated, could be portrayed in emotional terms. There might be feelings of love toward the place accompanied by a desire to cherish the community and see it flourish, not necessarily out of self-interest but because of one’s love for the area and its inhabitants. There may be feelings of pride if the bond to the area is positive and a sense of well-being from feeling part of a community. This might be accompanied by feelings of sadness and frustration in the face of issues within a community, such as litter, homelessness or the closure of local amenities that have been a source of community cohesion. A strong emotional connection might also be expressed as grief if residents are forced to leave an area due to personal circumstances, rising rents and house prices or larger-scale neighbourhood redevelopment.

In regard to behaviour, a place-attachment bond might be expressed through certain actions. For an individual, this might include Christian spiritual practices such as prayer-walking around an area, a practice encouraged by David Runcorn as a way to be attentive to God’s presence in a place and discern how one might best serve a local area.Footnote ⁶² The place-attachment bond might be formed and maintained through acts of Christian service in the community that are appropriate to the local area, such as volunteering for local organisations, litter-picking or helping with a church-run group that meets a local need, such as a food bank, parent-toddler group or dementia café. These behaviours could be part of a collectively established parochial ecology of a church that desires to be attentive to local needs and the ways they might partner with local organisations. Such a social ethic that has been conceived spatially provides an arena to realise one’s Christian vocation to love thy neighbour, which includes fellow humans and the more-than-human creation. A church might strive to incorporate the needs of local communities into their corporate practices of prayer and worship to help them be attentive to those who might go unnoticed in the church’s geographical area. For example, a rogationtide walk would be a fruitful group behaviour so that a church might become more aware of local issues and pray together for a place. Moreover, a Christian might move to a new area (if they do not already live there) to facilitate the Christian behaviour described above and maintain the proximity to the place (understood physically and socially) with which they have formed an attachment.

The cognitive aspect to the place-attachment bond may be operating in two parts. First, it may include an intricate knowledge and memory of the geographical contours of a place. This knowledge might comprise the topography of ancient parish boundaries that traverse waterways or defined features of the natural landscape. It could include roads and footpaths, green spaces and industrial sites, features of the built and natural landscape. Secondly, it might encompass a geographical theology of place that attends to how Christ’s reconciling work might be understood both locally and universally, providing the church a vocation to serve local needs because ‘Christ is in this place’. The place provides the contours for specific Christian action to love and serve fellow neighbours and creatures. This theological schema also challenges histories of injustice and exclusion, allowing for diverse expressions of belonging to place to be celebrated and cherished. A church may need to repent of past histories of harm and reimagine the social arena created by a collective place attachment. Moreover, a church congregation might corporately reimagine and challenge local place narratives so that attachment to place does not involve exclusionary habits but welcomes all those searching for belonging. As before with my sacramental theology of place, how well such as a theological schema is operating within a church or individual to give theological meaning to a place-attachment bond that is expressed affectively and behaviourally is difficult to establish.