Non-religious Christians

Abstract

Scholars who recently rejected secularisation theses on the grounds that they were insufficiently defined or contextualised now seem to be accepting with unseemly, uncritical haste, the new, in vogue notion of the post-secular. Scholars seem tempted to drop the term ‘post-secular’ into their papers and presentations as if it is a generally accepted and understood term. It is not and nor, as this paper will argue, is it plausible unless applied to a limited and specific range of phenomena. Far from disappearing, religion is often used publicly as a marker of group identity. This is not a return to religion, or a resurgence in spirituality, but a fluctuating form of contextualised religious identity. Christian nominalists may not believe in God or Jesus, at least if belief is understood as ‘faith’. It would be incorrect, however, to dismiss them as ‘unbelievers’, or their nominalist beliefs as not having essential or substantive reality. They believe in many things, usually related to ‘belonging’. By closely examining people’s sense of Christian ‘belonging’, we find other more subtle, interwoven ‘belongings’ related to, for example, history, nation, morality, gender, and ‘culture’.

Irreligiøsitet, kristendom og levet kulturreligion

“…Hidtil havde analyser af sekularisering som samfundstendens vaeret overskyggende, men siden 2000'erne og isaer 2010'erne har forskere i irreligion argumenteret for, at vi må bevaege os videre fra diskussionen om sekularisering, sekularitet og sekularisme og traekke på andre teorier og metoder for at beskrive udviklingen mere praecist. Om end sekularisering naturligvis er et relevant perspektiv, har forskere som Lois Lee (2015), Abby Day (2012), Jesse Smith & Ryan Cragun (2019), Ann Taves (2018) påpeget, at der er en raekke mangler inden for forskningen i irreligiøsitet, som ikke kan udbedres, hvis ikke man inddrager andre perspektiver end sekularisering. Forslagene er mange og forskellige: nogle forskere udfører kvalitativt feltarbejde inspireret af 'lived religion'-tilgange for at undersøge, hvordan det levede, irreligiøse liv former sig (Lee 2015;Manning 2015); andre gennemfører surveys med nye skalaer og spørgsmål for at undersøge, hvilke karakteristika, der kendetegner de irreligiøse (Silver et al 2014;Stoltz et al 2016;Lindeman et al 2020); og atter andre forsker i, hvordan irreligiøse individer er indrettet kognitivt, og hvordan dette former isaer trosforestillinger (Lindeman et al 2019;Gervais & Norenzayan 2012).…”

“…Kulturreligion eller kulturaliseret religion er et koncept, der vinder indpas, når isaer religionssociologer forsøger at beskrive moderne religionsformer. Forskere som Jay Demerath (2000), David Voas (2009), Abby Day (2012), Penny Edgell (2012), Lars Ahlin (2016), Marie Vejrup Nielsen (2016), Hans Raun Iversen (1999 samt Avi Astor og Damon Mayrl (2020) anvender begrebet, men med forskellige definitioner og forståelser af, hvad kulturreligion er. Nogle forskere, som eksempelvis Demerath og Voas, forstår kulturreligion som en form for religion, der er staerkt sekulariseret og i recession, hvorimod andre, som førnaevnte Astor og Mayrl, i stedet arbejder ud fra en forståelse af kulturreligion som levende og relevant.…”

Narratives on Ritual Transfer: An Interview Study about the Creation of Civil Ceremonies in Today’s Sweden

“…From a social constructivist perspective, religiosity is constructed in relation to other humans and can be a way to place oneself in a social context or mark access to a group, such as the person being a religious subject instead of a secular Other (Avishai 2008). Distancing from things one perceives as religious can also be a way to form identity and mark belonging in relation to others (Day 2012). Bromberg (2005) argues that rites of passage are especially appropriate for studies on how religious and cultural identities are constructed, as rites "seem to interrupt the flow of time and elicit a declaration of identity" (2005,16).…”