For ourselves and for each other – Politics of embodied religious belonging in the novel We Sinners

Authors

  • Sandra Wallenius-Korkalo University of Lapland Yliopistonkatu 8 96300 ROVANIEMI FINLAND
  • Sanna Valkonen University of Lapland Yliopistonkatu 8 96300 ROVANIEMI FINLAND

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.33356/temenos.48605

Keywords:

politics of belonging, embodiment, Laestadianism, literary fiction

Abstract

This article analyses religious belonging in a Christian revivalist community through a reading of Hanna Pylväinen’s novel We Sinners, a fictive history of a Laestadian family in the modern American Midwest. Like many conservative religious groups today, Laestadianism is increasingly affected by secular society’s norms and practices. We claim that the study of everyday religious belonging is essential in order to make sense of the power relations, structures, and dynamics of change within religious groups. The article approaches belonging as a thoroughly embodied state, taking the view that certain kinds of corporeality threaten the cohesion of religious communities while others strengthen it. The politics of belonging in the novel – the practices of inclusion and exclusion – are constructed in, on, and through the regulation of individual bodies. Control over clothing, behaviour, sexuality, movement, and being-in-common produces and governs embodied Laestadian subjectivity, as well as the ways in which belonging is shared.


Author Biographies

Sandra Wallenius-Korkalo, University of Lapland Yliopistonkatu 8 96300 ROVANIEMI FINLAND

Sandra Wallenius-Korkalo

Junior Researcher in Political Studies,

Faculty of Social Sciences,

University of Lapland, Finland

Sanna Valkonen, University of Lapland Yliopistonkatu 8 96300 ROVANIEMI FINLAND

Dr. Sanna Valkonen

Associate Professor of Sámi Research,

Faculty of Social Sciences,

University of Lapland, Finland

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Published

2016-06-01

How to Cite

Wallenius-Korkalo, S., & Valkonen, S. (2016). For ourselves and for each other – Politics of embodied religious belonging in the novel We Sinners. Temenos - Nordic Journal for the Study of Religion, 52(1), 37–60. https://doi.org/10.33356/temenos.48605

Issue

Section

Articles