Network extended article, from Issue 134, Spring 2020, page 28

Desert Island Eileen Barker moved the popular, yet questionnaire responses are manipulatable.” derogatory, term of ‘cults’ to one reflecting His case studies are sharp and layered with Discourse - nuance and difference, ‘New religious the sort of insights and observations that will movements’, through her study of the keep my imagination alive and running. Abby Day Unification church founded by South Korean Sun Myung Moon. Through detailed Why did you select for your third book, The observations, interviews, questionnaires and Spiritual Revolution: Why Religion is Giving Way wider data analysis, she found that to Spirituality, by Paul Heelas and Linda Abby Day is Professor of Race, characteristics like age, class or gender didn’t Woodhead? Faith and Culture in the help explain why people joined the A cliché perhaps, but there was one movement. Rather, the ‘Moonies’ shared sociological book that changed my life: The Sociology Department at complex experiences, attitudes and desires, Spiritual Revolution: Why Religion is Giving Way Goldsmiths. Her books and came mainly from conventionally religious to Spirituality. The change occurred for two families, held the same values as their reasons. The first was personal and articles include Believing in religious upbringing, and often simply professional: as a Lancaster University PhD Belonging: Belief and Social wanted to return to and recreate a sense of a student I was generously allowed to warm family. Moonies, it transpired, were participate in small ways during its research Identity in the Modern World pretty much like anyone else. stage. This was my first taste of empirical (OUP, 2013) and The Religious research and it was thrilling to find my way What made you choose your next selection – through church archives, county records Lives of Older Laywomen: the Crossing the Gods: World Religions and Worldly offices and libraries of census data, like a Last Active Anglican Politics, by Jay Demerath? detective following clues, only to realise that University of Massachusetts (Amherst) much of what is presented as ‘clean’ data is, Generation (OUP, 2017). She sociologist Jay Demerath is one of the in fact, often messy and full of human errors. foremost sociologists of religion whose Second, the theories the authors developed is a former Chair of the BSA arguments and theories have persuaded were sound and field-changing. Using a Sociology of Religion study scholars to take religion seriously as a single site as a base (Kendal, in the Lake contemporary social force. Demerath criss- District) the research team during two years group. crossed the world over a decade, visiting 14 conducted surveys, interviews, observations countries to explore religions in their and archival research to find and map national and international contexts. His ‘contemporary patterns of the sacred’ – the questions focused on the ways in which often hidden, nuanced stories within and Your first choice is The Making of a Moonie. religious actors experience their religions and amongst religious and spiritual lives. The Choice or Brainwashing?, by Eileen Barker – often collaborate and compete with secular researchers categorised the population they why did you choose that? interests. studied into two broad areas they described as I always wonder why people assume that a He notes that such interaction had been the ‘congregational domain’ composed of scholar studying religion must be religious. I largely ignored by scholars in the 1970s, who churches, chapels and other Christian also study and teach about criminology, but I thought religions, and those who studied institutions in the predominantly white town, don’t think people would assume I’m a them, were anachronistic and irrelevant. But and the ‘holistic milieu’, a diverse and often criminal. (Spoiler alert! I’m neither). The then, in the 1970s and 80s, came the rise of hard-to-find population whose activities had, main problem here is the academy’s the hard-right religious conservatisms, the in their own terms, a spiritual dimension – assumption that religion left the building visits and blessings of a Pope to Latin America such as groups meeting in private homes, sometime around the Enlightenment and yet, and Poland, with their strong, anti- circle dancers, yoga and Tai Chi groups, and as most people in the world are religious and government political agendas, and crises in complementary therapy practitioners. religion is an important social force (consider the Middle East fuelled by religious They found that the two types were distinct, why Evangelical Christians elected Donald sentiments and identities. with little or no overlap. Those in the Trump or why the Shah of Iran was deposed Demerath shows how the interests of congregational domain believed in a higher, by a theocracy, or why the BSA has had a politicians and religious leaders often merge, external power, such as God, while those in sociology of religion study group since the distinguishing between religious actors the holistic milieu focused on their own 1970s) the sociology of religion should be a becoming involved in politics, and such bodies and emotions, or ‘subjective lives’. The standard offer in any self-respecting sociology actors becoming involved in the state. The book’s title was arresting and misinterpreted department. The books I choose here reflect first, particularly for religions committed to by some. It was not the authors’ thesis that that sociological imagination. changing people’s behaviour, may be religion would die out and be replaced by A dominant narrative about people who inevitable, while the second, usually related to spirituality, but rather that some kinds of convert to new and often closed religious power, is contentious, both for religious and religion are losing their appeal and credibility movements was that they were brainwashed secular publics. as some forms of spirituality gain the same. and vulnerable. Worried parents would He was also adamant about the need for They found that 7.9% of the Kendal sometimes hire professional ‘cult-busters’ to complex methods for a complex subject, population belonged to the congregational kidnap their young, adult children and bring arguing that (2001, 221): “Mark Twain once domain, while 1.6% were in the holistic them back home for ‘de-programming’. No observed that ‘faith is believing what you milieu. They argued that if the current rate of one seemed to ask whether those young know ain’t so’. The very phrase ‘religious respective decline and growth continued in people had wilfully chosen their new groups belief’ is subject to misinterpretation because Kendal, within 40 years the holistic milieu or whether their new spiritual homes were in it is so often confused with cognitive certainty would outgrow the congregational domain. many ways similar to traditional religious as opposed to cultural identity. What we The text stands as a fine example of the organisations – apart from LSE sociologist actually believe – and with what level of generalisability of a single case study with Eileen Barker, who changed that narrative in intensity – is fraught with ambiguity and theories and methods that continue to 1984 and, with her charity Inform, continues inconsistency, depending upon the social inform contemporary research. to do so. circumstances. It is hardly surprising that Linda Woodhead went on to lead the

Network Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Spring 2020 largest research programme ever conducted ‘everyday religion’ by researching the pawns in a grand patriarchal plan” into contemporary religion, the AHRC-ESRC “nonexperts, the people who do not make a (Mahmood 2005, 1). She asks why women Religion and Society programme, which has living being religious or thinking and writing across the Muslim world actively support a revitalised and transformed the study of about religious ideas” (Ammerman 2007, 5) movement that seems inimical to their “own religion in the UK and internationally. and Meredith McGuire’s (2008) exploration interests and agendas”, especially at a of ‘lived religion’. historical moment when these women appear Your fourth choice is Religion in Britain since While Grace Davie made more than a to have more emancipatory possibilities 1945, by Grace Davie – why this book? dozen strong and deftly argued claims, available to them (Mahmood 2005, 2). The Another path-breaking work that formed several became central to my future study and concept of ‘duty’ describes one of the goals of my career was Exeter University sociologist thinking: the majority of British people the mosque movement according to Grace Davie’s ‘believing without belonging’ persist in believing in God but “see no need principles of ‘da’wa’, meaning a call or thesis, first written as a journal paper and to participate with even minimal regularity in summons. Mahmood’s analysis of the then as a book (1994). My first book, based their religious institutions” (ibid., 2). It is movement moves beyond the role of women on my doctoral research, was somewhat more accurate to describe them as and contested versions of feminism to unoriginally titled to present a variation on ‘unchurched’ rather than secular concerns about the construction of her theme, Believing in Belonging (Day 2011) (ibid.,12,13); the churches attract an personhood, negotiations between politics as I wrote in conversation with, and audience which is disproportionately elderly, and piety, and the permeable borders sometimes against, her theories. For the female and conservative (ibid.,2). between public and private. nearly three decades following the Fortunately for me, she left the term One reason I would want this book with me publication of her book, I and others working ‘belief’ relatively unexplained, something I is for the fine detailed descriptions and voices in the field knew it was her thesis for which was to pick up and, often with the that create a vivid, moving text, folded into a we would need to account, whether we collaboration of anthropologist Simon deeply engaging, thoughtful, theoretical agreed (and most did) with it or not. Coleman and sociologist Gordon Lynch, work. Davie drew mainly on surveys to create her research its meaning and practice over the Another is that re-reading it would take me compelling argument that the majority of next decade. back to stories and places I remember from British people believe in God, hell, sin and my own research and others’, where the heaven but just do not attend church Your last book is The Politics of Piety: The messy work of good research into religion is regularly. Her book was written to try to Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject, carried out, revealing surprising phenomena explain that and to reveal more about a by Saba Mahmood – what led you to this? – atheists who pray, religious people who taken-for-granted phenomena which is rarely Opinions about conservative religious don’t believe in God, non-religious people studied or otherwise explored – the large, women often rest on ideas that they are who do, feminists who adopt conservative and apparently unremarkable, middle oppressed, mistaken or suffer from a false practices, Sunday Christians, Evangelicals for ground in British religious affiliation. consciousness. The late Saba Mahmood’s Trump, Friday Muslims, Jedi Knights and She wrote that there were several good but study of Egyptian women’s involvement in a Cultural Jews, to name a few. Some may small studies of religion in Britain, but “the conservative, strict form of Islam known as describe such findings as puzzling or picture in the middle remains alarmingly the ‘mosque’ or ‘piety’ movement challenged contradictory; I prefer to think they are blurred”, with very little known about “the such narrow assumptions. patterns and processes we have not yet beliefs of ordinary British people in everyday A Pakistani-born American woman who discerned. Further research is necessary. life” (Davie 1994, 6). Her work anticipated introduces herself as someone strongly and influenced future research in the influenced by Critical Marxism and feminist And for your luxury? sociology of religion by people such as Nancy theory, she suggests that many feminists I’d say a photo album of my family, because Ammerman who developed the concept of believe that “women Islamist supporters are they’re what I’d miss most. References

Ammerman, Nancy T. 2007. Everyday Religion: Observing Modern Religious Lives. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

Barker, Eileen.1984. The Making of a Moonie. Choice or Brainwashing? Oxford: Blackwell.

Davie, Grace. 1994. Religion in Britain since 1945: Believing without Belonging.Oxford: Blackwell.

Day, Abby. 2011 [2013]. Believing in Belonging: Belief and Social Identity in the Modern World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Heelas, Paul, and Linda Woodhead, with Benjamin Seel, Bronislaw Szersynski, and Karin Tusting. 2005. The Spiritual Revolution: yWh Religion is Giving Way to Spirituality. Oxford: Blackwell.

Demerath, N.J., III. 2001. Crossing the Gods: World religions and worldly politics. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.

Mahmood, Saba. 2005 and 2012. The Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press.

McGuire, Meredith B. 2008. Lived Religion: Faith and Practice in Everyday Life. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

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Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Spring 2020 Network