Locative, Utopian, and Urban : The Ordinary Incongruities of Urban Religion

What if Jonathan Z. Smith had viewed the city through the lenses of urban religion ? This article begins by examining two central yet ambivalent categories in Smith’s work – rectification and incongruity. By analyzing these conceptual tensions, I argue that Smith overlooks a critical dimension of urban life : its capacity to create gaps – between expectations and lived realities, between normative codes of behaviors and actual conducts – while simultaneously producing subjects who not only navigate but also thrive within these incongruities, living off the rectifications they themselves enact. By foregrounding the incongruities inherent in religious expressions and experiences shaped by urban contexts, the article extends Smith’s core categories into the study of urban religion broadly, and of ancient Mediterranean Christ religion in particular. Ultimately, it lays the groundwork for remapping a distinctly urban religious phenomenon such as ancient Christian martyrdom, with The Martyrdom of Polycarp serving as a case study.