1 - Introduction

Summary

Highlighting that in practice the boundaries between religious traditions are not as sharply demarcated as depicted in the media and academic literature, many of the Lagosians whom I interviewed described themselves as ‘religious shoppers’ who had changed their religious allegiances or shifted between them. Chapter 1 analyses religious shopping against the backdrop of entrenched depictions of Lagos as an ‘apocalyptic megacity’. Itsmain argument is that in order to fully understand how religion is practised in a multi-faith setting such as Lagos, we must tackle the compartmentalization of the study of religion by taking religious pluralism – as manifested in the practice of religious shopping – as our starting point. This entails that we approach religion first and foremost as lived practice and experimental mixing.