Take a picture of religion: Engaging students in the multisensory study of lived religion

This article investigates how different media (including digital photography and sound recordings) can facilitate students’ creative engagement with complex concepts in the study of religion, particularly those associated with a ‘lived religion’ approach. In doing so, it explores possibilities for object-based learning and multisensory learning experiences in Higher Education (see also: Chatterjee et al., 2015; Innovating Pedagogy, 2020; Kelly and Sihite, 2018; Medina, 2009). It adopts a case study approach, focused on the critical evaluation of a range of assessed and unassessed activities that form part of the undergraduate second year (Level 5) Religious Studies course ‘A227 Exploring Religion: Places, Practices, Texts and Experiences’ offered at The Open University (UK). These activities ask students to take photographs and make sound recordings of aspects of religion in their local environment and then share and discuss these with other students on an online platform. The findings of this study are of particular relevance to blended and distance learning settings (including socially distanced settings in the context of the Covid19-pandemic) in Higher Education, where opportunities for object-based, multisensory learning have been especially underexplored. However, they will be of interest to anyone looking for creative ways to engage students in the study of religion.

“It’s a fraught subject”: Listening to Evangelical Doctors Talk about Abortion

News coverage, social media and protests alike tend to polarise people’s stances on abortion. Moreover, these also often reveal category slippage between ‘pro-life’ and ‘Christian’ or ‘religious,’ perpetuating the impression that to be religious is to reject abortion. Contrary to both tendencies, this article engages with abortion from a lived religion perspective. It listens to evangelical healthcare practitioners as they talk about their attitudes towards abortion. This reveals a complex picture, their ethical engagement variously taking the form of resistance, neutrality, uncertainty, compartmentalisation, change and situational negotiation, while drawing upon multiple sources of ethical authority, including their own ‘experiential knowledge.’ Having presented these complexities, the article concludes by exploring their implications. First, it considers the value of foregrounding emotion when engaging in lived religion research around ethics and controversial topics. Secondly, it suggests that combining social bioethics with emotional narratives might represent a means of communicating this complexity.

Greek-Orthodox Diasporic Glocality and Translocality in Germany and Great Britain

Migration does not take place in a vacuum, nor is the formation of communities thereof a mere collection of individuals; particularly when taking into account one of the main transferrable cultural determinants of identity and self-perception, i.e. group religiosity. The latter makes its aesthetic manifestation in the public sphere and hence, migration gives rise to religioscapes, which are identifiable by their visible markers in the form of architecture and religious art. The same applies to the Greek-Orthodox migrant communities of Germany and Great Britain. Both were established in the mid-twentieth century when the main bulk of their demographic presence in the corresponding countries took place. The formation of their communities occurred clearly before globality ushered in the contemporary, parallel, glocal, translocal and cultural relativisation that is facilitated by increased mobility and advanced means of communication. Yet, this paper argues that both the glocal and translocal conceptual frameworks apply to the case studies of interest. Evidence of this is particularly traceable in their corresponding religioscapes’ markers, which are permeated by aesthetic priorities and main influences, emergent patterns of predominant featured themes and tendencies that attest to glocality and translocality. Notably, not only are their places of worship containers of their immortalized narratives, they also contribute to the perpetuation of their distinct mutability. This phenomenon of aesthetic adaptation in accordance with the accumulated social experience, highlights the emergent patterns of a glocal and translocal sense of being and belonging that gave rise to the distinct hybrid identity amalgams thereof.

The Impact of Social Media on Italian Shamanism and Folk Magic

In the last decade, the use of social media has become widespread among all age groups in Italy. Facebook, in particular, has fostered the spreading of information and aided the gathering of like-minded individuals. This process has slowly but steadily affected communities involved with indigenous and trans-cultural shamanism. From the evolution towards a more inclusive and syncretic approach within autochthonous traditions to the wider reception and reinterpretation of imported shamanism, the narratives created online have translated into a tangible change of how practitioners position themselves within the affiliated tradition. By analysing data collected on a Facebook group I created ad hoc for my doctoral research and the content posted on public profiles and groups, I will argue that the use of Social Media reshapes the way practitioners construct their traditions and practices. In the case of vernacular healers, this prompted the development of a shared terminology while fostering a discussion on autenticity among trans-cultural shamans.

Everything is True Here, Even if it Isn’t: the performance of belief online

The primary stage for contemporary horror storytelling online, the subreddit No Sleep, declares the most important rule for users: everything is true here, even if it isn’t. This rule dictates the way users typically interact both on the subreddit and elsewhere while writing and reading horror stories online. Users typically post ‘in character’, or write as if the narrative is a true story. This impacts not only the comments, but also the story itself. Users engage with a playful performance of belief, demonstrating that belief is not just an on/off switch – ludically immersing themselves in ontological realities beyond their own. Using fieldwork conducted at No Sleep, this paper seeks to demonstrate the playful performances of belief as something much greater than ‘simple play’, but a demonstration of the sliding scale possible in belief. The process is not necessarily about finding belief, or changing belief, but about the performance itself. The performance of belief creates a social reality for the community. It is a manipulation of belief, which creates a form of mythic thinking which can create a spiritual experience. Realistic supernatural stories bring the supernatural into the everyday, but also brings the everyday into the supernatural.

Performing Clandestinity: The Religious Underground, the Secret Police and the Media in Communist Eastern Europe

The Cold War was frequently cast in the West as a religious war, a conflict between Christianity and atheism of the Marxist-materialist kind. Propaganda narratives produced by the opposing sides pitted faith against godlessness or science and progress against superstition and exploitation. The religious underground, which was at the centre of much of this propaganda activity, had both a metaphorical and literal meaning. With the opening of the secret police archives in the region, scholars of religions have been presented with important new sources to understand the relationship between anti-religious propaganda, western projections of religious life under communism and the actual clandestine practices of underground religious groups. Whilst the textual materials found in the archives have been the primary focus of attention for both historians and transitional justice projects, the search for ‘truths’ about the past has largely overlooked the visual and material traces of religion produced by and about religious groups. In this article, I explore the complex intersection of the religious underground and the secret police and how this was reflected in the public media and film during communism. Through an exploration of photographic and filmic representations of religious clandestinity produced by or with the help of the secret police, this article illustrates how such imagery, despite its complicity in the construction of a certain image of the religious underground, nevertheless also reveals aspects of the lived reality, creativity and agency of underground communities. This research is based on the findings of the European Research Council Project, Creative Agency and Religious Minorities: Hidden Galleries in the Secret Police Archives in Central and Eastern Europe (project no. 677355).

Student Placements and Communities of Practice: Opportunities and Challenges

At a time when increasing societal demand for religious literacy is coupled with pressure on UK universities to provide robust ‘employability’ provision for students, this paper will examine the role of placements as part of the academic study of religion. ‘Communities of practice’ (Wenger, 1998) will be used as a framework to support an interrogation of the student journey between the academy and the placement organisation and will open up critical questions about the ethical dimension to the placement opportunity. A practical account of how this is experienced, evidenced and problematized for students will be provided through a case study of the final year ‘External Placement’ module at the University of Leeds which will support the argument that the development of skills, and an awareness of the nature and practice of the student’s expertise, is fundamental to both academic development and to the potential for students to make applied use of their undergraduate studies after graduation.

Marginalized centre: Wana people and the geography of power

The Wana of Morowali (Indonesia) are nowadays a small endangered community marginalized by the Indonesian government, world religions and the other communities in the area but, according to their own mythology, they are not the periphery of the world, but the real centre of it. Their cosmogonic myth tells how the Wana land (Tana Taa) was the first land placed on the primordial waters and it was full of mythical power, a power that, when the land was spread around the world to create the continents, abandoned the Wana to donate wealth and power to the edge of the world: the West. This myth has a pivotal role in the Wana worldview, their categorization of the world and the power relationships in it. The Wana reverse the traditional relationship between centre and periphery, placing themselves in a powerless centre (the village or the Tana Taa) that gave all its power to a periphery (the jungle or the West) that must be explored to obtain power and knowledge. This relationship not only expresses a clear agency in shaping the relationship of power with forces way stronger than the Wana (Government and world religions) but also creates internal hierarchies based on the access to this knowledge; granted to men and partially precluded to women due to the cultural characterizations of these genders. Indeed, the majority of shamans, called tau walia (human-spirit), are men, and they are the only one that can travel between the human and the spiritual world, obtaining a spiritual and social power. In this article, we will see how Wana categorise the world and use religion, rituality and gender to express their agency to cope with the marginalization by the government, the world religions and the other community in the area.

Itako on screen

This article is based on my fieldwork with Itako shamans in the north-eastern part of Japan. The progressive modernisation of Japan at the expense of rural areas has also affected Tohoku, resulting in the ageing of the social fabric of its communities. Within this context, this article focusses on traditional and established activities practised by the blind female Itako shamans, who are going through a process of adaptation. Therefore, the article is concerned with this process and, in particular, on the methodology applied before and during my fieldwork experience of spending time, observing, having conversations, and filming these women in their everyday life. In the attempt to understand and document these shamans, I consider the use of visual ethnographic methods for understanding the changing aspects and their implications on the life of these women. While doing this, I also considered their communities and the area in which they live. I analyse this process by blending different methodologies such as visual methodology and digital visual ethnography and the critical religion approach proposed by Fitzgerald (2000). In addition, the paper will describe how I applied this methodology to provide a fresh look at these women and their daily activity.