Why the Dutch (Think They) Break Taboos:Challenging Contemporary Presentations of the Role of Religious Actors in Narratives of Sexual Liberation

In contemporary approaches to sexual health in the Netherlands, religion and culture are often framed as a source of taboos that need to be broken in order to create more openness around sexuality. This view is often projected onto migrants with a religious background and onto other parts of the world that are ‘still’ religious. In this article, we suggest that one element to developing a more inclusive approach is to question existing narratives of ‘sexularism’ and to acknowledge that both religious and secular actors have historically been involved in the search for better ways of approaching sexual health and sexuality in the Netherlands. In contemporary characterizations of Dutch culture, the sexual revolution is referenced as a time in Dutch history when religious small-mindedness around sexuality was dismantled through a series of transgressive media events. Iconic moments in the sexual revolution have become ingrained in a collective memory of the 1960s as liberation from the firm grip of religion on peoples’ intimate lives. In this article we argue that the contemporary Dutch equation of secularization with openness around sexuality obscures a more complex dynamic between conservative and progressive forces within Dutch religious history. Based on existing research, we show that openness around sexuality was taking shape from within Catholic and Protestant communities and being materialized in new discourses, services and practices around sexuality in the 1950s and 1960s. Frictions between Protestants and Catholics, the clergy and the people, and liberal and conservative circles were part and parcel of some of the iconic moments that are now considered to have shaped Dutch culture

Secularist understandings of Pentecostal healing practices in Amsterdam:Developing an intersectional and post-secularist sociology of religion

The past decades have seen an intensification of debate around migrants, gender and sexuality. For the Netherlands, several authors have pointed out how this has given rise to a form of sexual nationalism whereby the idea of being a modern, progressive country is strongly linked to a program of liberal sexual values and offset against a presumably 'backward' migrant who is 'still' religious and traditional. In this article, the author analyses how these dynamics played out in the controversy around HIV-healings or homo healings supposedly taking place in Pentecostal churches in Amsterdam. Media attention highlighted the theme of homosexuality while forgetting the interests of women. This article shows that the sexual nationalism scheme was also operative here, and proposes further developing existing approaches as intersectional 'post-secularist' sociological perspectives aimed at unearthing the ways narratives of modernity, secularization and sexual nationalism structure attitudes towards migrant and religious actors both in social scientific research agendas and among societal actors

Conflicting Futures, Entangled Pasts:Nigerian Missionaries in a Post-secular Europe?

Scholars studying Pentecostalism unite in networks such as the GloPent network (represented by this journal) on the basis of the fact that across the globe, we observe the emergence, growth and evolution of organization, networks that are similar, yet also quite strongly rooted in the local context. The emergence of missionary activities from Nigeria and other countries of what is often called the “Global South” is a new phase in the history of Pentecostalism that has now been ongoing for a while. It calls into question the relationship between local contexts and global religious phenomena in new ways: how can we understand these movements as shaped both by “local contexts” (of, in this case Nigeria), as well as part of a global network of Pentecostal movements, in the way they relate to the “local context” of a country that is a former colonial power (and current resource extractor and job provider, via Shell), namely the Netherlands? In this article I want to take a step back and attend to the question: what do we study when we study Nigerian Pentecostal missionaries in Europe? Furthermore, through attending the dimension of time I will explore how this phase in the history of Global Pentecostalism may also give new insights into the new complexities of Europe

Two-day conference: Materiality, Gender and Sensemaking Religion and Secularity in Everyday Life

Everyday settings, discourses and bodies are continuously in transformation – and this pertains also to practices of religion, spirituality, non-religion, and secularity . This conference therefore asks how religion is embodied and practiced in transformative everyday settings. Inspired by the turn towards lived religion in religious studies (e.g. McGuire 2008), we want to bring the notion of lived religion in conversation with three different topics: i) material religion; ii) gender and religion; iii) sensemaking. These three topics emerge from a threefold aim: first, this conference wants to present various accounts of how religion is understood, materialized and lived by various individuals and communities. Secondly, it explores how this takes place in everyday activities such as sexuality, work, education, sports, as well as through gendered ways of being in the world. Finally, by employing bottom up research approaches, the conference pleads for conceptualizations of religion that take seriously what is happening in everyday life understandings, practices and forms of embodiment, but always in relation to larger historical and sociopolitical discourses and realities.The three conference topics will be introduced on Day 1 of the conference by three lecturers who have showed the relevance of including these lenses in their work: David Geiringer (Queen Mary University of London), Katie Gaddini (University College London), and Mark de Rond (University of Cambridge, UK). Each theme corresponds to a panel at Day 2 of the conference, in which scholars are invited to present their current work

Why the Dutch (Think They) Break Taboos: Challenging Contemporary Presentations of the Role of Religious Actors in Narratives of Sexual Liberation

In contemporary approaches to sexual health in the Netherlands, religion and culture are often framed as a source of taboos that need to be broken in order to create more openness around sexuality. This view is often projected onto migrants with a religious background and onto other parts of the world that are ‘still’ religious. In this article, we suggest that one element to developing a more inclusive approach is to question existing narratives of ‘sexularism’ and to acknowledge that both religious and secular actors have historically been involved in the search for better ways of approaching sexual health and sexuality in the Netherlands. In contemporary characterizations of Dutch culture, the sexual revolution is referenced as a time in Dutch history when religious small-mindedness around sexuality was dismantled through a series of transgressive media events. Iconic moments in the sexual revolution have become ingrained in a collective memory of the 1960s as liberation from the firm grip of religion on peoples’ intimate lives. In this article we argue that the contemporary Dutch equation of secularization with openness around sexuality obscures a more complex dynamic between conservative and progressive forces within Dutch religious history. Based on existing research, we show that openness around sexuality was taking shape from within Catholic and Protestant communities and being materialized in new discourses, services and practices around sexuality in the 1950s and 1960s. Frictions between Protestants and Catholics, the clergy and the people, and liberal and conservative circles were part and parcel of some of the iconic moments that are now considered to have shaped Dutch culture