The teaching and learning of languages has been mainly investigated within educational institutions, especially by applied linguists. However, religious spaces such as churches and church related programs have historically and contemporarily served as important alternative spaces for such teaching and learning to take place. At the same time, such institutions and the way that language teaching and learning unfold in these spaces necessitates both a critical and empirical examination which makes salient the role and consequences of power. The focus of this special issue is to provide examples of studies which seek to fill this gap. This introduction serves as a way to set up this special issue and the articles within it by making salient the themes of language socialization, language ideology, identity, Christianity, ethnography and systems of power, as well as showing how the four studies in this special issue speak to the aforementioned gap and these themes.