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Contribution short abstract:

In this roundtable I will reflect on the distinctiveness, but also on the challenges, of creative art-based methods in representing lived religious experiences of LGBTIQ refugees in their process of reconciling and experiencing new liberating and affirming religious and theological readings.

Contribution long abstract:

Luhrmann’s seminal work, 'When God talks' (2012, 41), argues that being Pentecostal is a sensorial process that requires training in identifying the divine in multiple sites (physical, audial, olfactory, etc.) but also as a very personal, individual and dynamic experience. This malleability creates particular challenges to the study of Pentecostalism, which may become even more complicated with the analysis of specific groups. In this round-table, I will discuss the meaning of religiosity and the process of ‘religious re-appropriation’ of LGBTIQ refugees in East Africa and art-based methods as appropriate methods of analysis.

In my study in Kenya with Congolese and Ugandan LGBTIQ displaced people, who were forced to leave their home country because of sexual persecution often fuelled through conservative religious discrimination, it was apparent that old categorisations were not holding and that certain methodologies were not fruitful in grasping their complex religious experience. While living in transition, many participants tried to use their time to reconcile and re-appropriate the spiritual but without belonging to any specific local church, as those religious sites had previously became places of pain and trauma. In their Kenyan life, religious music, prayers, religious art and symbols were incredibly relevant to their everyday religious experience and process of reconciliation with religion. This roundtable will offer the opportunity to reflect on the distinctiveness, but also on the challenges, of creative art-based methods in representing lived religious experiences of LGBTIQ refugees in their process of reconciling and experiencing new liberating and affirming religious and theological readings.