2 results
Nine - Religious literacy in welfare and civil society: A Nordic perspective
- Christopher Baker, Beth R. Crisp, Deakin University, Victoria, Adam Dinham, Goldsmiths University of London
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- Book:
- Re-imagining Religion and Belief
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 14 April 2022
- Print publication:
- 29 August 2018, pp 145-168
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Summary
Introduction
While the concept of religious literacy has gained attention in the Anglo-Saxon world (Dinham and Francis, 2015), it is still new and hardly used in Nordic debates about religion. However, given the fact that the Nordic countries are often characterised as being at the forefront of secularisation (Welzel, 2013), one might anticipate that the Nordic countries should be at the forefront of debates about religious literacy.
In order to explore understandings of religious literacy in the Nordic countries, this chapter focuses particularly on the field of welfare and religion that has been recognised as an important arena to explore the changed role of religion between public and private spheres (Bäckström, 2014). The first part argues for the welfare perspective by presenting recent research in the sociology of religion that describes the interface between religion and the public sphere as Nordic complexity, and by referring to studies in Political Science highlighting the significance of religion for the formation and organisation of (European) welfare systems. This discourse about the role of religious organisations in welfare overlaps partly with the discourse about the role of civil society organisations in the Nordic welfare society. The second part explores Nordic studies about welfare and religion, pointing to a specific Nordic approach to the concept of religious literacy. The third part deepens this question with the help of two examples from Nordic case studies, a Swedish and a Norwegian one, that come from two recent Nordic research projects about the role of religious organisations in welfare and civil society. These examples illustrate that religious literacy should not only be thought of as the skill development of individuals and different groups of professionals, but also include an organisational perspective. Moreover, they also raise the question as to what kind of religious literacy is needed in Sweden and Norway.
Nordic complexity
Changes in the religious landscape
Nordic researchers in the field of religion tend to underline how complicated the religious situation in their countries is. The situation of religion in Sweden has been characterised as complex, based on more than 10 studies that were conducted with the aim of capturing the preconditions and possible effects of the transition of the Lutheran Church of Sweden from a state church to a free folk church in 2000 (Bäckström et al, 2004).
Eight - Understanding religious minority communities as civil society actors
- Edited by Lina Molokotos-Liederman, Uppsala universitet, Sweden
- With Anders Bäckström, Grace Davie
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- Book:
- Religion and Welfare in Europe
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 05 April 2022
- Print publication:
- 13 September 2017, pp 163-184
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Summary
Introduction
Is religion part of civil society? Most sociologists of religion would reply in the affirmative, not least since José Casanova questioned the hypothesis that growing modernisation, secularisation, differentiation and individualisation lead to the shrinking importance of religion in the public sphere (Casanova, 1994). However, in social science research on civil society, the religious perspective has remained marginal for a long time. In German and Swedish textbooks on civil society, religion and religious organisations are often covered in a short chapter or in a few pages, even if the authors are experts in the field of religion (see, for example, Adloff, 2005; Wijkström, 2012; Zimmer and Simsa, 2014). At the same time, religious diversity has grown on account of increasing waves of migration, and globalisation has revitalised debates on the role of religion and religious organisations in civil society in Europe. This is mirrored by an increasing number of publications and research projects in the field (De Hart et al, 2013; Baumann, 2014; Nagel, 2015).
It would be interesting to examine changes in the discourses on the role of religion and religious organisations in civil society over the past 10 years and to follow how research questions and arguments have evolved. The aim of this chapter, however, is rather more modest. Using as a starting point the research landscape outlined very briefly in the previous paragraph, this chapter examines what a local case study on the contribution of religious minority communities to social welfare can say about the role of religion and religious organisations in civil society. It draws in particular on the German case study in the Welfare and Values in Europe: Transitions Related to Religion, Minorities and Gender (WaVE) project, which explored relations between minority and majority in European societies through the prism of welfare (Leis- Peters and Albert, 2012).
Against this background, the first part of the chapter introduces recent studies on religion and civil society. The second part explains the setting and background of the German case study. The third part presents a particular example, a Turkish association, within the German WaVE case study, while the fourth and final part discusses the implications of these data against the background of the studies on religion and civil society presented in the first part of the chapter.