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.