list of all NORFACE projects on religion
In an allegedly secularized Europe, millions of pilgrims visit religious shrines each year. Places like Lourdes, Santiago de Compostela or Medjugorje have thus become impressive meeting points where huge numbers of Europeans from all backgrounds assemble to practice religion. This project aims to unravel the relationship between the ways in which people express their religion through pilgrimage and the new religious, social and political conditions in a rapidly changing Europe. Modern pilgrimage takes place in a context of a religious reshuffling in Europe: some new member states are less secularized than older ones, Islam is expanding, immigrants bring in variant beliefs, and Protestants and non-believers visit Catholic sacred places. What does making a pilgrimage mean in this context? Also other social forces are at play during pilgrimage. Far more women than men visit these sites, and pilgrimage may both reinforce traditional feminine roles as well as empower women to change them. Several sites had only local or national significance before, but now draw a very international public and relate to both cross-national and supra-national concerns. Therefore the central question of the programme is: What meanings do modern pilgrims attribute to the ritual of pilgrimage, and how are these connected to changing gender, national, and religious identities in present-day Europe?
The lived religion of pilgrims in a changing Europe will be studied by an international and multi-disciplinary (anthropology, gender studies, religious studies) team from The Netherlands, Sweden and Ireland. The researchers will follow pilgrims from different ethnic, religious and national background to the European pilgrimage sites of Czestochowa, Amsterdam, Santiago de Compostela, Lourdes, Medjugorje, Fatima, Paris, Knock, Croagh Patrick and Lough Derg. A combination of qualitative ethnographical methods will be used to understand what actually happens during pilgrimage and how pilgrims give meaning to their acts.
Principal Investigator:
Prof. Dr. JANSEN, Wilhelmina (Willy), Institute for Gender Studies at the Radboud University Nijmegen, Faculty of Social Sciences