Religion is a hot topic on the public stages of ‘secular’ societies, not in its individualized liberal or orthodox form, but rather as a public statement, challenging the divide between the secular neutral space and the religious. In this new challenging modus, religion raises questions about identity, power, rationality, subjectivity, law and safety, but above all: religion questions, contests and even blurs the borders between the public and the private. These phenomena urge to rethink what are often considered to be clear differences between religions, between the public and the private and between the religious and the secular. In this volume scholars from a range of different disciplines map the different aspects of the dynamics of changing, contesting and contested religious identities.
"The contributors offer fresh perspectives on the place of religion in modern, secular societies. (...) Professionals, undergraduate and post-graduate students interested in discourses of religion in contemporary societies would benefit from the book."
Sung H. Bauta, Asbury Theological Seminary,
Mission Studies 34 (2017)
Contents
Contesting Religious Identities: An Introduction
Anne-Marie Korte & Lucien van Liere
Part 1: Territories and Diasporas
Interpreting ‘Movement’ within Religious Studies: An Introduction to ‘Territories and Diasporas’
Lucien van Liere
Home of the Mother, Exile of the Father: Gender and Space in the Construction of Biblical Identity
Claudia V. Camp
Western Christianity as Part of Postcolonial World Christianity: The ‘Body of Christ with AIDS’ as an Interstitial Space
Adriaan van Klinken
Religion, Media, and the Global
Patrick Eisenlohr
Beyond Blind Faith: Religious Identities under the Conditions of Late Capitalism
Joerg Rieger
Part 2: Media and Texts
Broken Texts and Distorted Images: An Introduction to ‘Media & Texts’
Bob Becking
Psychoapocalypse: Desiring the Ends of the World
Tina Pippin
Dangerous Enthusiasm: An Aspect of the Clash between Cartesianism and Orthodoxy at Utrecht University
Henk van den Belt
Islam Controversies and Humour: Responses to Comedic Vlogs on the YouTube Battlefield
Fadi Hirzalla, Liesbet van Zoonen & Floris Müller
Fulla, the Cover-up Girl. Identity Politics via a Doll?
Martha Frederiks
Resilience Beyond Mimesis, Humanism, Autonomy, and Exemplary Persons
Joachim Duyndam
Part 3: Bodies and Rituals
Embodied Faith as Bone of Contention: Introduction to ‘Bodies and Rituals’
Anne-Marie Korte
Contesting Islam: The Making and Unmaking of Religious Faith
Nilüfer Göle
Martyrdom as a Contested Practice in Rabbinic Judaism
Eric Ottenheijm
Conservative Evangelical Listening Practices and the Embodiment of Faith
Anna Strhan
A Material History of Catholic Precarity in Amsterdam
Markha Valenta
Part 4: Epilogue
At the Threshold: A Panorama for Future Research and Challenges to Religious Studies
Lucien van Liere
Index
Professionals, undergraduate and post-graduate students interested in discourses of religion in contemporary societies