The authenticity of Christian Evangelicals: between individuality and obedience

A Quiet Faith: Quakers in Post-Christian Britain

“…Most interviewees and many survey respondents reported that they discovered they had been Quakers all along without knowing it. When asked whether they felt in any way changed by being a Quaker, some interviewees confirmed a degree of change in terms of behaviour and of being more mindful in their relationships with others; yet, even when there is a change, interviewees consider it unintentional and an outcome of Quaker practice rather than intentional as stressed in the narratives of evangelicals and post-evangelicals (Montemaggi 2013(Montemaggi , 2017a. The overarching narrative of finding home stresses continuity rather than change.…”

“…The burgeoning literature on non-religion points to a detachment and, at times, hostility towards religion understood in terms of doctrinal belief and conservative morality. This finds echo in the narratives of 'emerging' Christians, who seek to 'deconstruct' Christian worship and belief (Tomlinson 1995;Bergmann 2003;Guest and Taylor 2006;Bielo 2011;Marti and Ganiel 2014) but also in those of mainstream evangelicals, who stress experiential and relational belief and authenticity (Montemaggi 2017a(Montemaggi , 2017b. The present research shows that an increased disaffection with doctrinal religion is also prevalent in the narratives of new Quakers, those who have become Quaker members or attenders in the past three years.…”

Religion as Self-Transcendence. A Simmelian Framework for Authenticity

“…The sentiment of pietas, the feeling of being "bound to some general, higher principle" (Simmel, [1912: 156), is projected onto social relations giving rise to a duty towards members of the group (Laermans, 2006: 484). I have discussed Simmel's social dimension of religion and applied it to empirical data elsewhere (Montemaggi, 2017b). Here, I concentrate on the individual dimension of religion as a form of consciousness and as a particular sensitivity.…”

“…Building on Simmel's insight of religiosity as a sensitivity, I propose to understand it as a sensitivity to self-transcendence by linking it to his later Lebensphilosophie (philosophy of life). This interpretation is not meant to be philologically accurate; rather it emerged from dialogue with ethnographic data and serves to aid contemporary accounts of religious narratives of authenticity, which I have explored elsewhere (Montemaggi, 2013 and2017b) and which form part of an ongoing endeavour.…”

“…The authentic self thus emerges from, or better, is constructed out of this dynamic relation between self-transcendence and facticity. The empirical research on authenticity suggests that authenticity emerges out of a conflict between the ideal and the social, as evidenced by the experience of members of subcultures (Lewin and Williams, 2009) as well as Christian evangelicals (Montemaggi, 2017b). The reference to authenticity in the narratives of Christian evangelicals, as well as members of subcultures, often implies the pursuit of an ethical ideal.…”