Periodic Reporting for period 1 - WOMENEXREL (Women Leaving Religion in the UK and the Netherlands)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2021-11-01 do 2023-10-31
Women are often thought to be more religious then men. At the same time, a number of women disaffiliate from their religious tradition and/or community. This research project explored the lived realities of women from Jewish, Christian and Islamic religious backgrounds in the UK and the Netherlands, who self-identify as having left religion. It revealed that different former faiths, the community one belongs/belonged to, and embodied experiences all inform women’s experiences of leaving religion. Using an innovative life story approach, the project contributed insights to the study of non-religion and leaving religion, the interdisciplinary study of religion and gender, and the empirical comparative study of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Bringing women of different religious backgrounds (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) together in the same research has led to new and original insights into the dynamics of current Western European secularising and diversifying societies. The research investigated: a) how and why women lost faith and/or left their Jewish, Christian or Islamic community; b) how constructions and lived realities of gender, social class, sexuality and race/ethnicity shape women’s religious exit; c) how women’s post-exit relations with family and community are negotiated. This project combines a life story approach with participant observation at events organised by relevant civil society organisations and networks, as well as an exploration of narratives of religious exit in media, arts and culture. The results have been used to theoretically rethink the body and embodiment, how (leaving) religion intersects with gender, sexuality and race, and the concept of liminality as transformation in religious exit.
Between October 2022 and May 2023, 60 life stories were collected via life story interviews, in person or online depending on the interviewee’s preference. The participants were 57 women, one man, one agender person and one gender fluid person, aged between 19 and 71. 8 interlocutors identified as lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, gender fluid, queer, agender, asexual and/or complicated. Participants had various religious backgrounds. These included Anglicanism, Catholicism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Mormon Church, the Greek Orthodox Church, Orthodox Judaism and Pentecostal, Evangelical, Sunni Islamic and Dutch Calvinist Reformed traditions, and the Apostolic Community, the New Apostolic Church and the Worldwide Church of God. The interviews generated biographical narratives, investigated via a life story analysis. The researcher attended public events that discuss religious exit in order to gain insights into the issues women leaving religion deal with, and the discourses in which the experience of leaving religion is embedded. In addition, cultural narratives about women leaving religion in media and arts were explored to arrive at further insights into existing discourses about and tropes in stories of religious exit, gender and sexuality. The project found that women find it hard to leave their religious communities. Religious exit sometimes includes a faith struggle. Women often lose social relationships as a result of religious exit and need the support of new networks and friends to rebuild their lives. Women and non-binary persons regularly negotiate ideas about sexuality, motherhood and marriage, heterosexist structures that exclude LGBTQI+ identities and experiences, and racisms within and beyond their communities. The concepts of embodiment, intersectionality and liminality help in understanding their situation and trajectories of change. The theoretical, methodological and empirical results of the project were communicated at international conferences, presented in articles forthcoming in international academic peer-reviewed journals, and disseminated in popular outlets for a broader public. Additionally, an online international symposium ‘Gender and Religious Exit: Moving Away from Faith’, co-organised with Sarah-Jane Page (University of Nottingham, UK) and Teija Rantala (University of Turku, Finland), took place on 28 November 2023.
Progress beyond the state of the art included the researcher’s training through integration at the host institute the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations (CTPSR) and its Faith and Peaceful Relations (FPR) research theme. The researcher’s training comprised courses about research ethics and skills and a career development plan. The researcher trained others through the co-supervision of two FPR PhD students. The researcher was involved in several external collaborations. One of these included the co-developing of an international research consortium and project proposal. Research results have been communicated with civil society stakeholders and disseminated to a broader public in the UK and the Netherlands. Future academic and popular publications will similarly be communicated with interested stakeholders as well as research participants. No website was developed for this research project.