Enjoying Religion: Pleasure and Fun in Established and New Religious Movements

(Hardback)

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Enjoying religion seems to be a contradiction because religion is generally perceived as a serious or even suppressive phenomenon. This volume is the first to study the increase of enjoying religion systematically by presenting eleven new case studies, occurring on four continents. The volume concludes that in our late modern secular societies the enjoyment of religion or of its loose elements is growing. In particular when scholars concentrate on lived religion of ordinary people, the cheerful experiences appear to prevail. Many people use pleasant (elements of) religion to add meaning to their lives, to find spiritual fulfillment or a way to salvation, and to experience belonging to a larger unity. At the same time, diverse cultural dynamics of late modern society such as popular culture, commercialization, re-enchantment, and feminization influence this trend of enjoying religion. In spite of secularization, playing with religion appears to be attractive.

Reviews

Its delightful to find a scholarlybook that puts the fun back into religion. With itscoverage of different religious traditions, and manyperspectives, this fascinating collectionenables the reader to draw interesting broaderconclusions about how and why someforms of religion find it easier to embrace joy and sensuality than others. -- Linda Woodhead, Lancaster University
Now that emotions in general are increasingly acknowledged as important for religious studies, this book pinpoints enjoyment in particular as a worthwhile flow of devotees pleasure and as a theoretical topic worthy of scholarly analysis. A mixture of academic disciplines combines here to cover traditional and niche-novelty forms of meaning-making events to stimulate future studies of human pleasure in ritual play. -- Douglas J. Davies, Durham University
Religion is sometimes associated with the ludic, the liminal, and the playful, but this marvelous volume explores the much-less discussed theme of enjoyment. In some very vivid chapters, the contributors take us across the world and across religions. They greatly extend our analytical vocabulary by demonstrating the numerous ways in which we need to take the enjoyment of religion much more seriously. -- Simon Coleman, University of Toronto

Author Bio

Frans Jespers is associate professor of comparative religion at Radboud University, Nijmegen. Karin van Nieuwkerkis professor of Islam studies at Radboud University, Nijmegen. Paul van der Velde is professor of Asian religions at Radboud University, Nijmegen.