TY - JOUR
T1 - Practising the space between
T2 - Embodying belief as an evangelical anglican student
AU - Strhan, Anna
N1 - © 2013 Taylor & Francis. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details.
PY - 2013/5/1
Y1 - 2013/5/1
N2 - This article explores the formation of British evangelical university students as believers. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with a conservative evangelical Anglican congregation in London, I describe how students in this church come to embody a highly cognitive, word-based mode of belief through particular material practices. As they learn to identify themselves as believers, practices of reflexivity and accountability enable them to develop a sense of narrative coherence in their lives that allows them to negotiate tensions that arise from their participation in church and from broader social structures. I demonstrate that propositional belief-in contexts where it becomes an identity marker-is bound up with relational practices of belief, so that distinctions between belief in and belief that are necessarily blurred in the lives of young evangelicals.
AB - This article explores the formation of British evangelical university students as believers. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with a conservative evangelical Anglican congregation in London, I describe how students in this church come to embody a highly cognitive, word-based mode of belief through particular material practices. As they learn to identify themselves as believers, practices of reflexivity and accountability enable them to develop a sense of narrative coherence in their lives that allows them to negotiate tensions that arise from their participation in church and from broader social structures. I demonstrate that propositional belief-in contexts where it becomes an identity marker-is bound up with relational practices of belief, so that distinctions between belief in and belief that are necessarily blurred in the lives of young evangelicals.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84877030764&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/13537903.2013.783336
DO - 10.1080/13537903.2013.783336
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84877030764
VL - 28
SP - 225
EP - 239
JO - Journal of Contemporary Religion
JF - Journal of Contemporary Religion
SN - 1353-7903
IS - 2
ER -