Cities of Gods

A Global History of Religion and the City from the Ancient World to the Modern

Jörg Rüpke

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2026
• Print ISBN:
  9780691223759
  9780691223735
• eBook ISBN:
  9780691291994
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Social History

How cities and religions have shaped each other through history

In Cities of Gods, Jörg Rüpke offers an entirely new vision of the history of religion—one in which religion has shaped cities and cities have shaped religion. Rüpke shows how religious actions and ideas have produced cities since urbanization began some 6,000 years ago—and how cities have, in turn, changed religious practices. Cities have created new mass rituals that instill the idea of an encompassing community; priestly hierarchies, religious organizations, and globalized religious traditions follow. Urban religion, Rüpke argues, helps people in cities build a world and an identity that make living in a risky and powerful space more bearable.

Rüpke explores early processes of urbanization in Mesopotamia and Asia, showing how people’s willingness to live differently creates urban space. In examining the dynamic relationship between urban and religious change, Rüpke considers the differences and commonalties of cities including Uruk, Jerusalem, Vanarasi, Chang’an, Cairo, Lhasa, and Kyoto. The construction of monuments, the embellishment and appropriation of beliefs and rituals, the inclusion of ancestors and deities in social life: each offers a different lens for a history of the city that is also a history of religion. Much of what we consider characteristic of religion and religious practices comes not from the lone cry of a prophet or the prayer of a saint but from an urban religion built from the solidarity of people living in cities.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Prologue
• 1. Religion and the City
• 2. The Long History of the Urban Big Bang
• 3. Founding Stories: Rooting and Rejecting
• 4. The Great and the Many: Monuments and Spaces of the Religious
• 5. Gods, Ancestors, and Dead Fellows: Boundaries of Urban Communities
• 6. Equality for Unequals: Urban Rituals
• 7. Time of the Gods, Time of Humans: Urban Timescapes
• 8. Who Owns the City? Divine Property and Urban Infrastructure
• 9. Religious Aesthetics and Urbanity
• 10. Who Should We Be? Religious Identities and Authorities in Conflict
• 11. Who Am I? City, Self, and Writing
• Epilogue: Out of the City?
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• References
• Index