Abstract
Research on irreligiosity (non-religion, secular studies, atheism etc.) is rapidly growing. ‘The Scandinavian Paradox’, which denotes the fact that Scandinavians remain members of their national churches, but often self-identify as irreligious, still puzzles researchers. I introduce the research so far conducted connected to respectively irreligion and cultural religion in a Danish context and argue that more empirical data is needed for a more thorough understanding of these phenomena. I then introduce data from 30 qualitative interview from Denmark, conducted as part of a research project, which partly fills this gap. Based on exploratory analyses, I wish to open for a discussion on how we may perceive irreligion, Christianity and cultural religion in a modern Danish context. Rather than fitting individuals into distinct, fixed categories (e.g., religious vs. irreligious), I suggest that we may think of such distinctions as more dynamic and context-dependent rather than static and mutually exclusive. Modern theoretical understandings of religion and irreligion are increasingly focused on how (ir)religious identities, beliefs and practices shift and are situated. Inspired by such approaches, I argue that the informants activate different identities, depending on whether they are e.g. expressing individual, irreligious identities or are participating in collective, Christian identities and I further suggest, that cultural religion, and in Denmark specifically cultural Christianity, is characterized by encompassing and denoting this oscillation between and inclusion of different identities.
| Originalsprog | Dansk |
|---|---|
| Tidsskrift | Religionsvidenskabeligt Tidsskrift |
| Vol/bind | 2021 |
| Nummer | 73 |
| Sider (fra-til) | 5-21 |
| Antal sider | 17 |
| ISSN | 0108-1993 |
| DOI | |
| Status | Udgivet - maj 2021 |
Emneord
- Christianity
- Cultural religion
- Irreligion
- Lived religion