This thesis focuses on how Muslim Millennials in Canada and the United States navigate religious identities and research religious matters online. Their attendance and participation at the Reviving the Islamic Spirit (RIS) convention - an annual conference in Toronto - illustrates their desire to meet in person even though they also engage in religious learning and activities online. Through qualitative interviews, I discover that these young Muslims find conducting Islamic research online to be convenient, however, their community needs are not fulfilled in the online Islamic world. Reviving the Islamic Spirit fulfills this need for in-person engagement by creating a suitable environment allowing Muslims to interact with religious authority figures from online spaces. Reviving the Islamic Spirit also allows Muslims to feel a sense of belonging and community in an offline space. All the participants in this study turned to the online Islamic world in search of religious authority. For many Muslim communities, religious authority plays a large role in their everyday lives. Unlike other Muslim minority communities, Sunni Muslims cannot agree on central religious authority. They do not have a central authority figure who they can rely on for inquiring about religious matters. These needs of religious authority and community bring together Muslims at Reviving the Islamic Spirit convention. I argue in this thesis that Reviving the Islamic Spirit creates a "convergent space." In this space, characteristics are highlighted from the online and offline worlds without erasing any of the original elements. Reviving the Islamic Spirit provides space that brings the online religious world into the present offline world, and this in turn influences religious behaviours and lived religious experiences. The research questions guiding this study were: 1) What attracts young Muslims to RIS? 2) Does participation at RIS influence online and offline religious behaviours? 3) How are digital elements of online religion (such as virtual religious practices and religious forum discussions) brought into offline spaces like RIS? and 4) What happens when the two physical and virtual religious spaces come together such as at the intersection at RIS? Participants were recruited from Reviving the Islamic Spirit where I was able to speak with attendees and set up a booth in the marketplace portion where people could approach me with interest about this study. The methodology included conducting 50 in-depth interviews and participant observation of attendees at RIS. The results indicate that Muslim Millennials were fascinated by "celebrity imams" such as Yasir Qadhi, Mufti Menk, Omar Suleiman, and Sohaib Webb. The results also verify that a 'convergence space' exists at Reviving the Islamic Spirit convention.

This study focuses on upper secondary students' perspectives on religious education (RE) and what its shortcomings are. In the Swedish non-confessional school, students study the subject of RE where students must learn to gain "[...] respect and understanding for diverse ways of thinking and living". The National Agency for Education's governing document states that teaching should address diverse types of human views and perceptions of God within and between religions. In this study, perspectives such as lived religion in teaching are highlighted. Definitions of religion and lived religion are specified in previous research and in the theoretical framework. Within the framework of this study, 40 questionnaires have been handed out to 40 students and three focus group interviews have conducted with students from the same school. The majority of the students agree that subject of religion is dominated by a secularist discourse and that most students do not recognize their religion during the lectures.

The purpose of this study is to examine how the Swedish Sports Confederation and local sports clubs in Sweden address religious aspects in their policy documents in the context of religious inclusion. This paper highlights whether, and if so, which religious aspects are included and how they are taken into account. The content analysis of sports clubs' policy documents in the study contributes to understanding of general trends in the efforts towards religious inclusion, theorized through the perspective of lived religion. The study reveals that there is a great deal of variation in how sports associations deal with religious aspects in their policy documents. There is also great variation in how the sports clubs implement and interpret the guidelines from the Swedish Sports Confederation regarding religious aspects. A general pattern revealed in the study is that sports clubs have a positive attitude towards everyone's right to participate, but that much responsibility is placed on active members of the club in dealing with religious aspects of sport and how the sports clubs' treatment of religious aspects in their policy documents reflects an everyday adaptation to religious practices, which lived religion theory also highlights. By including material and physical aspects, the associations' work emerges as an adaptation, with leaders and coaches playing a central role in interpreting and shaping an inclusive activity for religious individuals.

This study seeks to understand how young Swedish Jews experience their Jewishness in contemporary Sweden. Many have tried to understand Jewishness through surveys. However, this study uses a qualitative approach as well as the lens of lived religion and theories of practice to move focus to how people do their Jewishness. This means focusing on how young people make sense of their Jewishness by what they do and how it feels for them. Through ethnographic interviews, shared experiences and by using the insider/researcher position as a tool, the ambiguous ways in which young Swedish Jews do their Jewishness becomes visible. As the results show, young Swedish Jews carry out both individual and communal Jewish practices. Doing Jewishness on your own can mean doing “weird things”; to carry out unconventional, self-created, Jewish practices. It can also be about carrying on tradition; meaning reproducing more traditional Jewish practices, but with a high level of agency. When doing Jewishness together a “magical feeling of togetherness” and feelings of belonging showed to be important aspects. Ultimately, all these Jewish practices are formed by ambiguous elements such as creativity, temporality, agency, and negotiation. When doing Jewishness, regardless of whether it is about going to synagogue: “goggan”, planting avocado seeds, or creating your own interpretation of kosher, the young Swedish Jews negotiate between what is meaningful for them and what is possible in the context of the majority society. In sum, this alternative approach to Jewish experience, where its meaning is not predetermined by researchers or Jewish institutions, can challenge our understanding of what it means to be a young Jew in Sweden today.

This thesis studies, through a series of interviews, the use of Lived Religion and cultural practices by migrant Thai women in Belgium as they seek to cope with the intimate partner violence they have suffered. The research looks at which strategies help the women to cope and which empower them to resist and leave their abusive context. The women were all beneficiaries of a Thai language support program run by the non-profit organisation Oasis Belgium.  The research uses a theoretical framework of Lived Religion, the religious and cul- tural practises in everyday life. In this case, this is not connected to congregational worship. In fact, the women in the study were very isolated and had to reconstruct their Lived Religion and cultural practice for themselves in their new location. To do this, they relied strongly on the memory of religion in their upbringing, the use of online media and communication with family back in Thailand. Through Lived Religion they were able to gain agency over their emotional reactions and then con- sider the problems they faced more objectively and decide how change might come.

This thesis aims at contributing to a critical discussion on the supposedly far-reaching secularity of Sweden on the one hand, and on the incongruence and inconsistency of lived religion on the other. At the center are people referred to as semi-secular Swedes – a group that is often neglected in the study of religion. These people do not go to church or get involved in any other alternative organized spiritual activities, neither are they actively opposed to religion or entirely indifferent to it. Most of them describe the ways they are – or are not – religious as in line with the majority patterns in Swedish society. The study is qualitative in method and the material has been gathered through interviews and a questionnaire. It offers a close reading of 28 semi-secular Swedes’ ways of talking about and relating to religion, particularly in reference to their everyday lives and their own experiences, and it analyzes the material with a focus on incongruences. By exploring how the term religion is employed vernacularly by the respondents, the study pinpoints one particular feature in the material, namely simultaneity. The concept of simultaneity is descriptive and puts emphasis on a ‘both and’ approach in (1) the way the respondents ascribe meaning to the term religion, (2) how they talk about themselves in relation to different religious designations, and (3) how they interpret experiences that they single out as ‘out-of-the-ordinary’. These simultaneities are explained and theorized through analyses focusing on intersubjective and discursive processes. In relation to theorizing on religion and religious people this study offers empirical material that nuance a dichotomous understanding of ‘the religious’ and ‘the secular’. In relation to methodology it is argued that the salience of simultaneity in the material shows that when patterns of religiosity among semi-secular Swedes are studied there is a need to be attentive to expressions of complexity, contradiction and incongruity. / Religious ambiguities on the urban scene

The broad aim of this thesis is twofold: firstly, I contextualise the Maausk movement and its practitioners’ understandings in relation to history and the surrounding society; secondly, I analyse the affective and embodied experiences of being a Maausk practitioner from a phenomenological perspective. The thesis focuses on the formation and practice of Maausk, which is perceived to be deeply tied to the society and history where it exists. Relatedly, this study examines how Maausk identity formation and practices have been influenced by the Soviet legacy, romantic nationalism and Estonia’s current economic and political situation. In order to analyse the Maausk experiences and narratives, this study draws from various phenomenologically oriented theories of affect, embodiment and emotion, as well as cultural theories of place, identity, tradition and authenticity. I have used economic anthropology and globalisation theories as well as historical studies of Estonia’s Soviet past to contextualise the Maausk movement. Further, to place Maausk in the European religious landscape, this study refers to native faith and Neo-pagan studies. Through sensory ethnography, this study draws on the affective and emotional aspects of the research material to analyse how the complexity of emotional experiences of being a Maausk practitioner produces Maausk meanings and values. The study also examines the role and function of the body and emotions during the process of embodying the Maausk practices, both techniques and meanings of the practices.

Religious traditions are something that all of us have learnt about in school, even if we do not have a personal connection to a specific religion. Studies have shown that there is a discrepancy between what we learn about religious traditions and religiosity in school, and how religious people practice their faith in everyday life. How the religious tradition plays a part of an individual’s identity is not something that school textbooks specifically explains. For example, the course material does not mention how geographical context affects a person’s religiosity, even though the course curriculum, that is being studied in this thesis clearly states that you have to give examples of how different aspects of someone’s identity affect their religious identity.    This thesis discusses how Lived Religion can be included in course material as well as in the teaching of religious education in school in order to give a more accurate and more democratic picture of religiosity. Lived religion is a perspective that capture how individuals express their religious tradition and how religiosity could look like in different contexts. To use Lived religion as a complement in education could also help the pupils to achieve what the objectives in the curriculum asks for. Nevertheless, even if Lived religion is a helpful compliment to the traditional way of teaching the topic of religion, this thesis also shows that is it important to be aware of how this new perspective is used. If the perspective of Lived religion is not used correctly in classroom or how you explain someone’s religious identity, it could have greater negative consequences than its positive gain.   The title of this thesis aims to points towards how Lived religion can communicate a more complete picture of what religiosity is. The thesis argues that it is problematic to omit e.g. religious tradition or geographical context from an individual’s identity. That is also one of the main points of Lived religion, which is that religious identity is the religion lived out in the day-to-day life.

Between 1858 and 1930, Victoria’s Chinese immigrants brought their homeland religions to the Canadian city of Victoria BC. They experienced a broad range of challenges as they attempted to fit into the mainstream society. This continual struggle affected their religious lives in particular as they sought to adjust in ways that helped them deal with racial discrimination. As a result, Chinese folk religions, especially those emphasizing ancestral worship, became intertwined with local Chinese associations as a way of strengthening the emotional connections between association members. Some associations broadened their membership by adding ancestral deities or worshiping the deity of sworn brotherhood in a bid to create broader connections among the Chinese men who dominated Victoria’s Chinese community. At the same time, Christians, who practiced the religion of Victoria’s mainstream society, reached out to the Chinese, at first by offering practical language training and later by establishing missions and churches that focused on the Chinese. Many Chinese immigrants welcomed English classes and the social opportunities that churches provided but resisted conversion, as the discrimination they faced in mainstream society had left them sceptical about Christianity, which was seen as closely linked to the dominant Western culture. However, Chinese attitudes towards Christianity became more favorable after the 1910s, when the patriotism of Chinese immigrants led them to support revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen and his new Chinese government, which promoted Christianity as a symbol of modernity. In general, the Chinese in Victoria were not especially enthusiastic about religion, whether Chinese folk religion or Christianity, although women were generally more interested in religion than men. Although many Chinese pragmatically sought comfort and assistance from both religions, they followed Confucian orthodoxy in focusing primarily on daily life rather than religious life. At the same time, over the decades between 1858 and 1930 both Chinese folk religion and Christianity affected the Chinese community as this community adopted a mixture of Western and Eastern cultures, including religious elements from both cultures. / Graduate / 2020-08-20

In Christian contexts, the meal is usually connected to the sacrament of the Eucharist. In this essay, the aim is to explore the everyday meal in which people gather, both at home and in church settings. What are the theological meanings of a meal, and what are people experiencing around the table? The essay poses the question Which theological meanings are expressed concerning the meal in Christian contexts? To answer this question, the essay has two theoretical frameworks, which are “body theology” and “lived religion”. The method used in the essay is a two-part analysis. The first part is a content analysis, with focus on the writers’ emotions and experiences. The second part is a dialogue with Norman Wirzba. The material contains primary and secondary material, which are books by Kendall Vanderslice, Lina Mattebo (red.), and Norman Wirzba.   This essay concludes that the meal in Christian contexts has many different, mostly positive, meanings. The most prominent meanings of the meal are community and relationship building, identity, spiritual exercise, and a strong sense of the significance of the body. Many of the authors express a feeling of connection to God in the meal, even in the everyday situation. The concept of “exile” is also explored. For future research it would be interesting to aim focus towards meals in non-Western countries, and to investigate the effects of gender and what power dynamics that meals may have.