Young people at a revivalist summer gathering: Rituals, liminality, and emotions

Abstract

This article examines the religiosity of young people at a summer gathering of a Christian revivalist movement. Studies on religious mass events as social phenomena, as well as research on youth participation, are still quite few. The open-air summer gatherings of the traditional Finnish revivalist movements operating within the national Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland attract masses of people from all generations simultaneously as the church itself sustains losses at the attendee rates of the more institutional collective practices. This article seeks to answer why this event is appealing for a group of active young people by investigating their visitor experiences and the meanings attached. It perceives the event as transient arena for expressing, negotiating, and reviving religious meanings. Drawing on interviews, participant observation, and narratives, this qualitative case study seeks to illustrate current religiosity and, in general, to contribute to the comprehension of collective religiousness in people's somewhat individualized and private religious lives.

Examining the Impact of Religious Initiation Rites on Religiosity and Disaffiliation over Time

“…Using retrospective data on young Catholics who traveled to the 2008 "World Youth Day" in Australia, Singleton (2011) shows that participants who were moderately high Mass attendees before attending the event were more likely to increase their Mass attendance compared to infrequent or highly frequent attendees. Moreover, Nissilä's (2018) qualitative analysis of youth who participated in large open air revivalist gatherings held by the Finnish national Evangelical Lutheran Church shows that the primary impact for individuals was "emotional energy" and deepening a shared religious identity among youth, something that had been declining within the flagging Finnish Church. Unfortunately, because these studies only focus on individuals who all underwent these pilgrimage experiences, they are unable to compare outcomes of participants with nonparticipants.…”