I spent two weeks in New Zealand over the holidays visiting my best friend and her family — my first trip out of the country in a few years and only my second time in New Zealand. It was fun getting out of the States and immersed in a new place for a few weeks.

While driving around New Zealand during the trip, I was struck by the number of churches I saw (so many Mormons and Anglicans and a surprising number of evangelical-looking churches!), and I made a comment saying as much to the friend I was visiting. 

Apparently, it was a little odd to comment on how many churches I’d noticed as we drove around the North Island. I hadn’t thought of it as odd until that moment. It seemed natural to take notice. However, my friend calling it out, made me realize that I frequently have my eye on the religious landscape of a place. 

I do it in my own town as I walk around, commute, and run errands. I notice churches and temples, or perhaps more frequently here in the Northeast, churches now turned into condos. I notice the people going in and out of these places. I notice religious advertisements on the bus and train and people proselytizing at T stops. 

And I’m on the lookout for these same things when I travel, maybe even more so than in my own town — picking out various religious buildings, landmarks, signage and billboards, etc. In fact, my curiosity frequently gets the best of me, and I’m not above going down a Google rabbit hole when I see a religious point of interest (Well, interesting to me, apparently mundane to many others).

I notice these things and ask myself all sorts of questions. What types of churches and other religious buildings are there? How many are there? How prominent do they seem? Are there more in certain places than in others? What denominations are most prevalent? How do they blend in with the landscape — do they blend right in, stand out? Are they the more traditional buildings you’d expect for a house of worship or something different? And why do all these evangelical churches have such silly names?

But these seemingly surface-level questions point to deeper questions about how religion shapes a place. What might this religious landscape tell us about society more broadly? Does the religious landscape point to secularization or to the growing influence of religion or something in between? What does it tell us about who is and who isn’t engaging in some sort of religious practice? What does it tell us about the changing demographics and history of a place?

Let’s look at a few examples from my own neighborhood to illustrate what I mean. There’s a church on my usual walking route that’s clearly historic and has been in the neighborhood for probably at least a century. In what has traditionally been a white working-class and middle-class town just outside of Boston, this building housed a Brazilian congregation for the first few years I lived in this neighborhood but is now home to an Ethiopian Orthodox Church. The Episcopal Church I used to attend in this same town now shares the space with a Haitian Baptist congregation. And my neighborhood is also dotted with Armenian churches, as well as a good number of historic church buildings that are now condos. 

All of these examples tell a story. A story of immigration and diaspora and the ways various waves of immigration might shape a neighborhood. A story of the ebb and flow of religious practice — some churches enduring, some disappearing, others morphing into something new.

What does the religious landscape around you look like? Let what you notice pique your curiosity and imagination about the religious landscapes and stories that surround us all. If you look at the religious landscape of your town or neighborhood, I’m sure the people and places you see have their own stories to tell if you just pay attention.