Faith in the Familiar: Religion, Spirituality and Place in the South of the Netherlands

Leiden: Brill, 2013. First edition. Octavo. viii, (2), 183, (3)pp. Indices and bibliography. Pictorial buckram with lilac/gray spine lettered in white. A fine but ex-library copy (with minimal markings; i.e. rubber stamps on title page & bottom of text block).

Faith in the familiar is an ethnography of religious change in the Netherlands, discussing Catholicism and popular forms of New Age. It focuses on the location of religion in local life and how people relate to religious authority. (OCLC)

Faith in the Familiar is an ethnography of religious change in the Netherlands, a country that has moved from strongly pillarized to strongly secularist in the space of fifty years. This book shows how people look back on this, but also how Catholic rituals continue to play a role in the reproduction of place. Furthermore, it shows how forms of spiritualism and new age have become part of a pluralistic local religious landscape, and are used to create new ways of relating to religious authority and to reshape personal relationships. Situating itself within general theories of religious change in Western Europe, it offers a contribution to this discussion from an angle that is often neglected, focusing on locality, rather than on globalization; on what happens to 'old' religion, rather than on new religious trends, on popular forms of 'spirituality' rather than on middle class and highbrow spirituality. (Publisher)

Contents: Acknowledgments; Chapter One Situating the Research; 1. Introduction; 2. Secularization Theory: Premises and Predictions; 3. Criticisms and Attempts to Redefine the Field; 4. Conceptualizing the Subject Matter; 5. Description of the Research; Chapter Two Moral Discourses in Dutch Catholicism: from Pillarization, via Liberation to Polarization; 1. Introduction; 2. Catholic in Everything: Triumph and Moral Anxiety; 3. From Moralizing to Psychologizing; 4. The Local Church Versus Papal Power Play; 5. Catholicism in Limburg; 6. Concluding Remarks.; Chapter Three Narratives of the Past, Progress and Polarization 1. Introduction; 2. Representations of the Past; 3. Changes; 4. Polarization; 5. Comparison of Past and Present; 6. Concluding Remarks; Chapter Four Religious Authority, Ritual and the Familiar; 1. Introduction; 2. Rituals Around Death and Dying; 3. Becoming Modern; 4. Re-Signification of the Catholic Tradition; 5. Concluding Remarks; Chapter Five Practicing Spirituality; 1. Introduction; 2. Power and Knowledge; 3. Relationships and the Demands of Individualism; 4. Skeptical Positivism; 5. Spiritual Consumer Culture.; 6. Concluding Remarks Chapter Six Liberal Catholicism: The Burden of the Past and the Problem of the Present; 1. Introduction; 2. The Sacralization of Uncertainty; 3. The Burden of the Past; 4. The Problem of the Present; 5. Gossip and Stereotyping; 6. Concluding Remarks; Chapter Seven Conclusions; Bibliography; Index of Modern Authors; Index of Subjects and Persons.

Volume 143 in the Brill's series, "Numen Book Series. Studies in the History of Religions."