Transcending Methodological Atheism and Not Thinking Transcendentally: Nuns’ Understanding of Life within the Cloistered Monastery
Issue: Vol 14 No. 1 (2019)
Journal: Fieldwork in Religion
Subject Areas: Religious Studies Linguistics
DOI: 10.1558/firn.39707
Abstract:
The main goal of the article is to propose an alternative approach towards the monastery, which relies on overcoming methodological atheism and is rooted in a lived, everyday religion approach. In order to do so, in the first section, I reconstruct Peter Berger’s methodological atheism, discuss its limits, and point to alternative methodological approaches. In the second section I present elements of my sociological study of a female, cloistered monastery, focusing on the dichotomy between obedience and autonomy in nuns’ experiences of life within a cloistered monastery. If understood from a classical perspective, the two traits seem contradictory. My research suggests that some nuns perceive these two characteristics as supplemental rather than contradictory. I propose that using an approach that focuses on lived, everyday religion, rather than an approach focused on religious experience (methodological atheism) allows for a comprehensive interpretation of how monasteries work and how monks and nuns operate in this specific environment. It also allows for the integration of social actors’ understanding of their environment into investigation.
Author: Marcin Jewdokimow
References :
Ammerman, Nancy T.
2007 Everyday Religion: Observing Modern Religious Lives. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2014 2013 Paul Hanly Furfey Lecture Finding Religion in Everyday Life. Sociology of Religion(75)2:189-207. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/sru013
Asad, Talal
2003 Formations of the Secular. Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Berger, Peter L.
1969 The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. New York: Anchor Books.
2014 The Many Altars of Modernity. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Bianco, Frank
1991 Voices of Silence: Lives of the Trappists Today. New York: Anchor Books.
Cantrell, Michael A.
2016 Must a Scholar of Religion Be Methodologically Atheistic or Agnostic? Journal of the American Academy of Religion(84)2: 373–400. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfv066
Casanova, José
1994 Public Religions in the Modern World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
2018 The Karel Dobbelaere lecture: Divergent global roads to secularization and religious pluralism. Social Compass 65(2): 1–12. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0037768618767961
Egenolf, Peter
2003 Vocation and Motivation. The Theories of Luigi Rulla. The Way(42)3: 81–93.
Francis, Mother Mary, PCC.
1956 A Right to be Merry. New York: Sheed and Ward.
Fry, Timothy
1998 The Rule of Saint Benedict. Vintage Spiritual Classics. New York: Random House.
Guillaumont, Antoine
1979 Aux origines du monachisme chrétien. Pour un phénoménologie du monachisme.Begrolle-en-Mauges: Abbaye de Bellefontaine.
Goffman, Erving
1961 Asylums. Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates. New York: Anchor Books.
Habermas, Jürgen
2006. Religion in public sphere. European Journal of Philosophy(14)1: 1–25. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0378.2006.00241.x
Hulme, Kathryn
1957 The Nun’s Story. London: Muller.
Jewdokimow, Marcin, Quartier, Thomas OSB (eds),
2019 Visual Approach to the Study of Religious Orders: Zooming in on Monasteries. Abingdon, New York: Routledge.
Knibble, Kim and Droogers, André
2011 Methodological Ludism and the Academic Study of Religion. Method & Theory in the Study of Religion(23)3–4: 283–303. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/157006811X608395
Latour, Bruno
2013a An Inquiry into Modes of Existence. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
2013b Rejoicing: The Torments of Religious Speech. London: Polity Press.
McGuire, Meredith
2008 Lived Religion. Faith and Practice in Everyday Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2016 Individual sensory experiences, socialized senses, and everyday lived religion in practice. Social Compass 63(2): 152–162. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0037768616628789
Merton, Thomas
1948 TheSeven Storey Mountain. New York: Harcourt Brace.
Orsi, Robert A.
2002 The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
2003 Is the Study of Lived Religion Irrelevant to the World We Live in? Special Presidential Plenary Address, Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, Salt Lake City, November 2, 2002 . Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion(42)2:169 –174.
Porpora, Douglas V.
2006 Methodological Atheism, Methodological Agnosticism and Religious Experience. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour(36)1: 57–75. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5914.2006.00296.x
Rulla, Luigi M.
1971 Depth Psychology and Vocation: A Psychological Perspective. Rome: Gregorian University Press.
Rulla Luigi M., Ridick, Joyce and Imoda, Franco
1986 Anthropology of the Christian Vocation: Existential Confirmation. Rome: Gregorian University Press.
Sharma, Arvind
2005 Religious Studies and Comparative Methodology: The Case for Reciprocal Illumination. New York: State University of New York Press.
Taylor, Charles
2007 A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.
Vasquez, Manuel A.
2010 More Than Belief: A Materialist Theory of Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.