Paper short abstract:

Scholars are increasingly focusing on “lived” religion which they distinguish from “official” religion. I argue that despite differing in focus, the two forms of religion supplement each other. I illustrate my argument with examples from the role of the Qur’an in the everyday lives of young Muslims.

Paper long abstract:

During the past few decades, religion scholars have increasingly focused their attention on so-called “lived” or “everyday” religion. Lived religion is typically defined by distinguishing it from a contrasting kind of religiosity, for example, “institutional” or “official” religion. However, as is often emphasised, “lived” and “official” kinds of religion should not be seen as conflicting or mutually exclusive. Instead, they are typically motivated by different kinds of concerns. As commonly understood, “official religion” refers to religion as expressed in the professional writings of religious specialists. As such, it typically uses discursive reasoning to establish general truths about the nature of divinity. In contrast, lived religion is what average practitioners of a religion do as part of their daily lives. Instead of abstract theological questions, lived religion usually seeks to address the emotional and social concerns of a believer on a very personal level.

In this paper, I endorse the prevailing view of not seeing lived and official forms of religiosity as contrary to each other. In addition, I argue that despite having a somewhat different focus, the two kinds of religion supplement each other. In particular, official religion provides a kind of “opportunity structure” for the practice of religion as part of everyday life.

I illustrate my argument with examples from a research project on the role of the Qur’an in the everyday lives of young Shi`a Muslims in Finland. I have gathered the data for the project through semi-structured interviews and ethnographic fieldwork. In my paper, I focus especially on the favourite Qur’an passages of my young informants. I contrast what my informants say about their favourite passages with the more general meaning of said passages in the faith community. As I hope to demonstrate, the personal meaning-making of the informants occurs in the broader context of institutional religion.

Paper short abstract:

The paper examines movement as a spiritual technology in the context of pilgrimages, and how the notion of movement may help us to understand spirituality as a material practice.

Paper long abstract:

The so-called mobility turn in human sciences highlighted pilgrimage as a bodily activity, as movement. Pilgrimage was understood as not so much about reaching a (spiritual) goal as about moving towards it. Movement was, thus, not considered meaningless or subordinate to higher spiritual ends but was to be understood as inalienable from them. The paper continues this vein of study and examines movement as a technology enabling, contributing to, and forming embodied spiritual experiences in pilgrimages. Under examination are the ways in which the different facets of movement – such as form, pace, and rhythm – can be regarded as constitutive of pilgrims’ spiritual (whether secular or religious) ends. Furthermore, through the case of pilgrimage, the paper examines the analytical potential of the concept of movement in studying religious/spiritual practices by understanding it not merely as moving at, from, and to a place, but more broadly as including motion and emotion. The paper is based on participant observation during pilgrimages and interviews of pilgrims in Southern Finland in the summer of 2023.

Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes the technologies of insistence and resistance in rituals to return dead relatives to the world in Tamil Hinduism. Resisting broader sweetening trends, in possession performances the dead frequently insist on fiercer offerings/practices like alcohol, crematory ash, and piercings.

Paper long abstract:

Grounded in long-term ethnographic fieldwork conducted in non-brahmin Hindu communities in Tamil Nadu, this paper analyzes the technologies of insistence and resistance that are operative in the elaborate invitation ceremonies to call departed relatives back into the world. In these ceremonies ritual musicians summon the dead and encourage them to speak through their living kin in what are often dramatic and tense exchanges. These two-day rites aim to convince the dead to take up permanent residence in the family’s home shrine as a protective household deity and are part of a repertoire of little-known ritual relationships that some families maintain with their deceased kin. Theorizing from a 2019 ceremony performed to bring a dead man named Ganapathy back into his family’s midst, this paper considers how the dead make their desires known through speech acts and possession performances, wherein they demand specific offerings and practices such as alcohol, crematory ash, and tongue-piercing. In the ritual to return Ganapathy to the world as a pūvāṭaikkāri—a term which literally means “a woman who wears flowers” but may refer to any deceased relative who is worshiped as a family god—we see a dead patriarch unwilling to settle for fruits, sweets, and vegetarian delicacies, insisting instead on offerings more suited to his appetites and preferences. These exchanges vividly highlight the technologies of insistence and persistence manifest in dialogues with the dead, wherein the dead habitually refuse sweeter or more sanitized substitutions. Although in some cases ritual participants and the musicians work hard to persuade the deceased to reconsider their demands, these negotiations are rarely successful. This paper argues, therefore, that the dead’s steadfast refusal to be satisfied by anything but fierce tongue-piercing practices, ash, and alcohol signals a deliberate resistance to the sweetening trends visible in many contemporary Tamil ritual contexts.

Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I will reflect on how hybrid space and cyberspace are crucial in the making of the transnational Angolan Pentecostal church. Equally, I will analyse how cyberspace mediates between different modes of the imagined church community and offline performances.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I will reflect on how hybrid space and cyberspace are crucial in the making of the transnational Angolan Pentecostal church. Equally, I will analyse how cyberspace mediates between different modes of the imagined church community and offline performances.

The Angolan Pentecostal Church Bom Deus has spread to Cape Verde Islands, Brazil, and several African and European countries. The Bom Deus church is a Pentecostal church of Congolese origins that nationalised in Angola. It is heavily linked with the Bakongo ethnic group, and Bakongo social culture, however, it managed to transcend the ethnic boundaries in Angola. In the nineties of the 20th century and in the first decade of the 21st century intense missionary movement spread the church into different continents. If in Europe the church is linked with the diasporic Bakongo culture, in other spaces like Cape Vert and Brazil it had to be imagined from the scratch in a very diverse socio-political, religious, and cultural environment. In all these places the church managed to recreate its affective and aesthetic formation. Moreover, the headquarter located in Angola and in the centres in the European diaspora, continue managing the performance of the church in the distant, isolated transnational parishes.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the hybrid space of Bom Deus church, a mix of offline performances, digitalised and online streaming in creating a notion of a Bom Deus community. Equally, the paper will dwell on the imagined idea of Bom Deus church that becomes real through cyberspace. It will be done by concentrating on particular missionaries, church leaders, and the modes of their offline and online existence and performances.