The social production of sacred space in urban Oslo

Abstract

This article examines two recent expressions of religion in the multi-religious setting of the Norwegian capital Oslo. The Muslim group Ansar al-Sunnah’s claim of the district Grønland is scrutinized in relation to the public and cultural image of Islam in Norway, and a Christian response to the contemporary multi-religious context is examined via an analysis of the priest Gyrid Gunnes’ performance at The National Exhibition of the Visual Arts in Oslo. These cases are further discussed in relation to spatial theories and theologically embedded questions about ecclesiology and eschatology. This article shows that Ansar al-Sunnah stages an image of Islam that is produced in a cultural Islamophobic discourse, while Gunnes’ performance problematizes taken-for-granted notions about God, the church and what it means to be a Christian. The prevailing, dominant and culturally embedded ideas of what it means to be a Christian or a Muslim are being challenged in Gunnes’ performance through the use of queer theory and apophatic theology.