Is God Back?: Reconsidering the New Visibility of Religion

297 Pages·2015·1.173 MB·English

by  Titus Hjelm

Is God Back?
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Is God Back?
Reconsidering the
new visibility of religion
edited by
titus Hjelm
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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First published 2015
© Titus Hjelm and Contributors, 2015
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ISBN: HB: 978-1-4725-2903-9
PB: 978-1-4725-2666-3
ePDF: 978-1-4725-2185-9
ePub: 978-1-4725-2840-7
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A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
Contents
List of contributors vii
List of tables and figures xi
Acknowledgements xii
1 Is God Back? Reconsidering the
new visibility of religion Titus Hjelm 1
PArt oNe Conceptualizing public religion 17
2 Studying public religions: Visibility, authority and the
public/private distinction Marta Axner 19
3 Religion, media and modernity: Editorials and religion
in Swedish daily press Mia Lövheim and Alf Linderman 32
4 Religious cleavages and national identity in
European civil societies Annette Schnabel 46
5 Illiberal secularism? Pro-faith discourse in
the United Kingdom Steven Kettell 65
6 Negotiating the public and private in
everyday evangelicalism Anna Strhan 77
7 The Gods are back: Nationalism and transnationalism
in contemporary Pagan and native faith
groups in Europe Kathryn Rountree 90
PArt tWo Rethinking the religion–state
relationship 105
8 Religion and state in the twenty-first century:
The alternative between laïcité and
religious freedom Luca Diotallevi 107
vi CoNteNts
9 The sacred state: Religion, ritual and power in the
United Kingdom Norman Bonney 118
10 Social class and Christianity: Imagining sovereignty
and Scottish independence Paul Gilfillan 132
11 National piety: Religious equality, freedom of religion
and national identity in Finnish political
discourse Titus Hjelm 147
12 Religion, democracy and the challenge of
the Arab spring Ian Morrison 161
PArt tHree Religion and social action 177
13 Social welfare provision and Islamic social movements
in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA):
A viable form of social action? Rana Jawad 179
14 Understanding definitions and experiences of care and
caring among Hindu and Muslim older people: The role
of ethnicity and religion Akile Ahmet and Christina Victor 191
15 Religion and transnational Roma mobilization: From local
religious participation to transnational social activism in
the case of the Finnish Roma Raluca Bianca Roman 205
16 Finding God in the process: Recovery from addiction
in Sarajevo Eleanor Ryan-Saha 217
Notes 231
Bibliography 240
Index 273
List of contributors
Akile Ahmet is a postdoctoral research fellow in the College of Health and Life
Sciences at Brunel University, London, UK. She works alongside Professor
Christina Victor on the Leverhulme funded project, ‘Care and caring for ethnic
minority older people in England and Wales’. A further project exploring
poverty and ethnicity has recently been funded by the Joseph Rowntree
Foundation. Prior to Brunel she was based at Goldsmiths, University of
London, as a research officer investigating progression and diversity of social
work students, funded by the Department of Health. Her PhD, awarded from
Queen Mary, University of London, explored home and identity for young men
of mixed race.
Marta Axner is an affiliate researcher in sociology of religion at the Religion and
Society Research Centre, Uppsala University, Sweden. Her doctoral research,
which she defended in 2013, was titled Public Religions in Swedish Media:
A Study of Religious Actors on Three Newspaper Debate Pages 2001–2011.
Her research interests concern religion and the public arena in varying ways,
such as religion and media/popular culture, mediatization of religion and
religion and politics.
Norman Bonney is an emeritus professor at Edinburgh Napier University,
UK. His latest publication is Monarchy, Religion and the State: Civil Religion
in Canada, Australia and the Commonwealth (Manchester University Press,
2013).
Luca Diotallevi is a professor of sociology at Roma Tre University, Rome, Italy.
He has been a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions
at Harvard University, US. His recent works include ‘Internal Competition
in a National Religious Monopoly: The Catholic Effect and the Italian Case’,
Sociology of Religion (2002), the entry ‘Church’ in the Blackwell Encyclopaedia
of Sociology, Una alternativa alla laicità (Rubbettino, 2011) and ‘Catholicisme
et modernisation: nouveaux défis historiques. Une analyse du cas italien’ in
Béraud C. et al. (eds), Catholicisme en tensions, vol. 1 (EHESS, 2012).
Paul Gilfillan is a senior lecturer in sociology at Queen Margaret University,
Edinburgh, UK, and is the programme leader for the Public Sociology
viii list of CoNtributors
undergraduate programme. His teaching portfolio and research interests
include research methodology, nationalism, the sociology of religion, social
class and the sociology of contemporary Scotland. His first book, A Sociological
Phenomenology of Christian Redemption, was published in 2014.
Titus Hjelm is a lecturer in Finnish Society and Culture at University College
London, UK. His publications include Social Constructionisms (Palgrave,
2014), Studying Religion and Society: Sociological Self-Portraits (ed. with Phil
Zuckerman, Routledge, 2013) and Religion and Social Problems (ed., Routledge,
2011). In addition, he has published several books in Finnish and articles in
journals such as Critical Sociology, Acta Sociologica, Religion, Social Compass
and Journal of Contemporary Religion. He is the co-editor of the Journal of
Religion in Europe (published by Brill) and the founding chair of the American
Academy of Religion’s Sociology of Religion Group.
Rana Jawad is a lecturer in Social Policy at the University of Bath, UK. She
has extensive research experience in the social welfare systems of the region
of the Middle East, with particular focus on Islamic welfare institutions. She
currently directs an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)-funded
project on religion and social policy in the Middle East and is convenor of the
Middle East Social Policy Network, http://www.bath.ac.uk/ipr/our-networks/
middle-east-social-policy/ based at the University of Bath. She is the author
of Social Welfare and Religion in the Middle East: A Lebanese Perspective
(2009) and Religion and Faith-based Welfare: From Wellbeing to Ways of Being
(2012), both published by the Policy Press.
Steven Kettell is an associate professor in the Department of Politics and
International Studies at the University of Warwick, UK. His main research
interests are centred on the intersection of politics and religion, as well as the
politics of atheism. He is the author of several books, including New Labour
and the New World Order (Manchester University Press, 2011) and is founder
and co-executive editor of British Politics.
Alf Linderman is an associate professor in the sociology of religion at Uppsala
University, Sweden, and the executive director of the Sigtuna Foundation.
Linderman is specialized in research at the nexus of media, religion and culture.
He has published work on religious television, media reception, media content
analysis, survey research and methodology and has conducted comparative
studies of the interplay between media and religion in different geographical
regions.
Mia Lövheim is a professor in sociology of religion, Uppsala University,
Sweden, and vice-president of the International Society for Media, Religion
list of CoNtributors ix
and Culture (ISMRC). Her current research concerns representations of
religion and modernity in Swedish daily press, gender and digital religion, and
the interplay between religion and mediatization. Her work has appeared in
the journals Nordicom Review; Information, Communication and Society;
Feminist Media Studies; Culture and Religion and Nordic Journal of Society
and Religion. She is the editor of Media, Religion and Gender: Key Issues and
New Challenges (Routledge, 2013) and, with Stig Hjarvard, of Mediatization
and Religion: Nordic Perspectives (Nordicom, 2012).
Ian Morrison is an assistant professor of Sociology at the American University
in Cairo, Egypt. His publications include articles in Citizenship Studies and The
Review of European and Russian Affairs, as well as several chapters in edited
volumes. His research interests include continental social and political thought,
the sociology of religion and citizenship and nationalism studies.
Raluca Bianca Roman is a PhD candidate in Social Anthropology at
the University of St Andrews, UK. Her research interests include visual
anthropology, ethnographic filmmaking, phenomenology of religion, studies
on personhood, youth and religious socialization. She has published papers
on religion, secularization, ethnicity and ethnic identity, including ‘The voice
of the community? Grassroots interactions between immigrant Roma and
social activists in Helsinki, Finland‘, Ethnicities (forthcoming). Her PhD project
focuses on the religious conversion and mobilization of Finnish Kaale (Finnish
Roma) to Evangelical movements in Finland. She is a member of the European
Network for Romani Studies and a policy editor for the University Association
for Contemporary European Studies (UACES) Collaborative Research Network,
‘Romanis in Europe’.
Kathryn Rountree is a professor of anthropology at Massey University, New
Zealand. Her research has dealt with modern Paganism in Malta and New
Zealand, feminist spirituality, pilgrimage and embodiment and the contestation
of sacred sites. Her books include Crafting Contemporary Pagan Identities in
a Catholic Society (Ashgate, 2010), Embracing the Witch and the Goddess:
Feminist Ritual-makers in New Zealand (Routledge, 2004), Archaeology of
Spiritualities (ed. with Christine Morris and Alan Peatfield, Springer, 2012),
and Modern Pagan and Native Faith Movements in Europe (ed., Berghahn,
forthcoming). Her articles have appeared in a range of journals, including
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Journal of Anthropological
Research, Journal of Contemporary Religion, Journal of Feminist Studies
in Religion, Body and Society, Environmental Ethics, Feminist Theology,
Sociology of Religion, The Pomegranate, Anthropology of Consciousness,
History and Anthropology and Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale.