Making Religion Coexist: Ritualizing Diversity and Staging Coexistence in Barcelona and Buenos Aires

Abstract

This article examines two emblematic urban events—La Nit de les Religions in Barcelona and La Noche de los Templos in Buenos Aires—that showcase religious diversity through open-door nights in places of worship. Although developed independently, these initiatives reflect a transnational repertoire for governing diversity through symbolic performances, spatial choreographies, and affective encounters. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research, policy analysis, and interviews with organizers, religious communities, and municipal actors, we explore how these events render religion publicly visible, legible, and governable. We argue that both cases exemplify institutional isomorphism, where cities adopt similar models due to global pressures and shared imaginaries of conviviality despite the absence of direct coordination. However, while both events aestheticize and curate religious diversity, they differ significantly in governance: Barcelona’s event is led by civil society, emphasizing horizontal participation and secular neutrality; Buenos Aires’s is state coordinated, aligned more closely with urban branding and cosmopolitan narratives. In both contexts, inclusion often depends on a group’s capacity to translate its beliefs into nonconflictive, aestheticized, and spatially accessible formats. This dynamic curates diversity while subtly excluding voices that fall outside these frameworks. These dynamics, we argue, are not incidental but central to how religious diversity is shaped and governed in urban settings. Our analysis contributes to current debates on religious pluralism by examining how interreligious events operate as arenas where recognition is facilitated but also stratified. While these initiatives promote openness and pluralism, they also impose soft boundaries around acceptable forms of religiosity, often excluding groups that lack visibility or resist aesthetic domestication. What forms of religiosity are amplified—and which are silenced? Which discourses on religious diversity and coexistence are consolidated? And what do these performances of pluralism reveal about the politics of diversity in an era marked by the rise of extreme-right movements?