Unity, Division and the Religious Mainstream in Sweden by Erika Willander

Author:Erika Willander
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9783030524784
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

© The Author(s) 2020

E. WillanderUnity, Division and the Religious Mainstream in SwedenPalgrave Studies in Lived Religion and Societal Challengeshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52478-4_4

4. Mainstream Understandings of the Religious

Erika Willander1

(1)Department of Sociology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

Erika Willander

Email: [email protected]

Abstract

Presents inquiries of what commonly are associated with the word religion in Swedish. This chapter includes two parts: an analysis of how religion and religiosity are perceived in one to one conversations, and conclusions from a large-scale analysis of how the word religion is used in Swedish social media. These two parts bring forward an image of religiosity, and particularly beliefs, being something of one’s own choice and, religion being a trait of otherness, a symbol of vulnerability and a relic of a historical past.

Keywords

Religion in Swedish discourseLatent Semantic AnalysisSocial mediaThe spiritual revolution

One reason why the religious mainstream remains out of sight for social scientists’ means of observation is that many Swedes find it hard to talk about their own relation to the religious. The values and actions of the mainstream are therefore difficult to observe in one to one conversations or in general Swedish discourse. Faced with this reluctance to talk about God in Sweden and Scandinavia sociologists have found swedes to be irreligious (Zuckerman 2008). As discussed in the previous chapter, conclusions like Zuckerman’s are in line with many swedes self-image and therefore not challanged by those participating in interview studies.

Despite the difficulties of talking with swedes about their own relation to the religious, there exists studies on this topic. In this chapter I describe and discuss two studied I have conducted. The first one is an interview study with Swedes holding a range of religious identities (practicing Christian, committed to Alternative spirituality, atheist, and identities positioned in-between afore mentioned identities). The second one is an analysis of social media discussions on religion. It is based on a comprehensive sample of public discussions (almost a quarter of a million documents), performed as a form of statistical discourse analysis and yields a summery of the data portraying three distinct uses of words closely related to religion. Aided by these two sources of information, this chapter ends with a sketch of how the religious mainstream understands the religious.

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