Marianne Qvortrup Fibiger

Religious Diversity and Pluralism: Empirical Data and Theoretical Reflections from the Danish Pluralism Project

Although religious pluralism is a key word for understanding contemporary religious life, it is only recently that in-depth studies of religious pluralism have appeared. This article presents major findings from the Danish Pluralism Project, a collective research project which was launched in 2002. Religious diversity has grown in Denmark with the arrival of new immigrant groups and with new forms and interpretations of traditional religious and spiritual traditions. More importantly, the relations and interactions between religious groups—the hallmarks of religious pluralism—are still incipient. Both religious diversity and religious pluralism build on assumptions of stable relationships between religion and religious adherents and clear-cut boundaries between religious groups, assumptions which may be difficult to sustain in late modern societies. This article gives an overview of the Projects findings and discusses theoretical challenges related to religious diversity and religious pluralism.

Alike but different: the understanding of rituals among Sri Lankan Tamil Hindus in Denmark

ABSTRACT This article will discuss the meaning(s) of rituals among Sri Lankan Tamil Hindus in Denmark with special focus on the second generation. It will use Roy A. Rappaports theory on ritual both as communication and as a basic social act, but it will also, in line with Jan Assmann and Hervieu Legér, understand the ritual as a storing place of collective memory. It will give a short outline of what can be called the institutionalisation but also the placemaking of the Sri Lankan Tamil Hindu tradition in Denmark, but the empirical focus will be on the chariot procession (Tēr), which attracts thousands of participants every year. The Tēr procession is an example of continuity and change. Continuity because the participants try to reproduce the ritual as they know it from Sri Lanka, however, changed so it fits into or communicates with the new setting.

The Danish Pluralism Project

This article is based on The Danish Pluralism Project, focusing on the first pilot project, which was a detailed study of religious diversity and plurality in the municipality of Aarhus, the second largest city in Denmark with around 290,000 citizens. The product of our research was a description of 75 different religious groups, in addition to the Evangelical Lutheran Church, as well as an examination of the presumed religiosity or spirituality of alternative therapists as an example of what this article calls ‘‘fluid religiosity.’’ In other words: this article deals with religion in terms of locality, focusing on the interplay between this particular locality and late-modernity and how religion has adapted to both. 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. The Danish Pluralism Project is an academic research project established through a grant from the Danish Research Council for the Humanities; it is the aim of the project to document religious pluralism in its diverse forms in Denmark. The theoretical outcome has been an ongoing discussion on the usefulness or lack of usefulness of the term pluralismda common catchphrasedwhen it comes to describing the religious landscape in contemporary Western societies. This article will focus on the first pilot project, which was a detailed study of religious diversity and plurality in the municipality of Aarhus, the second largest city in Denmark (population ca. 290,000). The study did not exclusively focus on prototypical religions but also on what I will call floating or liquid religiosity,1 which challenges the parameters of categorisation normally used when dealing with religions and religious types. We were seven researchers involved in the project over a period of two years. The product of our research was a description of 75 different religious groups, in addition to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark and the alternative therapists who were examined as examples of fluid or diverse religiosity. More than 170 alternative healers completed a questionnaire. The results were compiled in a 500-page publication entitled Religiøs mangfoldighed. En kortlægning af religion og spiritualitet i Århus (‘Religious Diversity. Mapping Religion and Spirituality in Aarhus’) and entered into a database. In other words, this article will deal with religion in terms of locality, focusing on the interplay between the local setting (history, demography, geography, policy, etc.), late-modernity, and how religious groupsdthe individual members within these groups, and the individuals who assemble her/his own private religion, being inspired by different understandings of life and worldviewsdhave adapted to both. The article will try to address these considerations by: 1) mentioning how many religious groups in the city have their own address or are represented by a spokesperson or a meeting place, and how the different groups from an overall perspective are described structurally as a unity. On this institutional and collective level it can be useful to talk about pluralism; 2) focusing on the diversity which, contrary to considerations at the structural level, is understood as giving a group a kind of overall conforming pattern (rituals, ethos, behaviour, etc.) and is still present within the group as represented by the individual members, and the individual’s interpretation or understanding of belonging to the group; 3) mentioning how we can find expressions of an individual form of patchwork religion (2 and 3 can in contrast to 1 be called ‘‘the individual level’’). By doing so, it will try to uncover the multitude of religions or religiosity in late-modern Denmark, which is known as the most secular country in the world together with Sweden (Zuckerman, 2008). The context or the demands of late-modernity According to most sociologists our late-modern world is heading towards a more or less hardcore individualism without any shared context. This is caused by what Giddens calls ‘‘disembedding’’ (1991, pp. 17–18), and what Gupta calls ‘‘de-linking’’dbased on his research y Bauman (2000), who describes our time as Liquid Modernity. All rights reserved. M.C.Q. Fibiger / Religion 39 (2009) 169–175 170 among young Hindus in Norway, where he noticed a fragmentation or de-linking when it comes to understanding the relationship between religion, custom, nation and art, and therefore a shift not only in the conceptualisation of religion (2006, pp. 106–107), but also in the individual understanding of belonging. In other words, the individual is lifted out or away from patterns shaped by tradition. Or as Zygmunt Baumann (2002, p. 475) puts it: ‘‘Modernization replaces the determination of social standing with a compulsive and obligated self-determination.’’ Therefore, the stability of our everyday life is challenged. We are no longer pilgrims trying to find out how to get to a particular destination but vagabonds struggling daily to resolve problems such as: where to go? Should I go? And how do I get there (Baumann, 2002: 477)? And if I want to go, who will help me? Religious traditions as well as scientific institutions used to be regarded as respected authorities within their domains. Occasionally, when people began wondering about fundamental issues, they consulted these authorities or expert systems (Giddens and Luhmann) for answers that they could rely on. This convention of mutual trust no longer exists because valid answers within the various expert systems can expire or change at any time in keeping with rapid changes in people’s worldviews, or one expert system can be challenged by another. To put it differently, we live in a hypercomplex world, where it can be stated that the functional objective is not to create ‘‘order’’ out of ‘‘chaos’’ but to manage this complexity by meeting it with complexity (Qvortrup, 2003, p. ix) or by meeting it with stability and simplicity. The first point where complexity is met with complexity seems to be when it comes to individual religiosity. Here we either find 1) a patchwork religion, where elements from different religions are put together in a kind of self-determined system, where new elements in an ongoing flow can replace, release, or join the ones which are already there; or 2) we find that the interpretation of belonging to a religion differs from the institutional one. Where complexity is met with simplicity seems to be in play within most immigrant groups who are adapting to a new context and a society where ‘‘plausibility structures’’ or structures that are taken-for-granted seem to be gone. The outcome is different, but it is obvious that there is a need for a well-known or well-structured system that can be regarded as a buffer zone against the complexity of daily life. On this level it can be fitting to use the term pluralism especially when the group and its members see themselves as more or less an exclusive entity, which can be measured in terms of their rhetoric and shared behaviour.

Lad guden komme til os: Tempelprocessioner hos srilankansk-tamilske hinduer i Danmark

English abstract: Through a presentation and analysis of Ter, a wagon procession which is part of a ten-day temple anniversary festival held once a year among Sri Lankan Tamil Hindus in Denmark, I aim to show the importance and the meaning of procession among Hindus in diaspora. The article will especially take Bernhard Lang’s definition or characteristics of procession into account but will also emphasise the multifunctional character of this procession as well as its importance as religion on public display. The analysis is based on my on-going research on the Sri Lankan Tamil Hindus in Denmark, which began shortly before the first Sri Lankan Hindu temples were consecrated around the year 2000. This has given me the possibility to follow the development of the Ter procession over the years and to notice how it has grown both in size and popularity. I will argue that the procession has become not only a fulcrum for social cohesion and identity but also as a way of communicating belonging, both internally within the group and externally to the surrounding society at large. Dansk resume: I denne artikel vil jeg praesentere og analysere processionen Ter, en vognprocession der er tilknyttet en ti-dages tempelfodselsdagsfest som afholdes blandt de srilankansk-tamilske hinduer i Danmark, og jeg vil vise betydningen af denne procession for hinduer i diaspora. Artiklen vil tage udgangspunkt i Bernard Langs definition eller maske mere praecist hans processions-typologier, men vil laegge vaegt pa processionens multifunktionelle, performative og offentlige karakter. Analysen vil basere sig pa mit lobende feltarbejde af de srilankansk-tamilske hinduer i Danmark, hvilket begyndte for det forste srilankansk-tamilske hindutempel var indviet omkring ar 2000. Det har givet mig muligheden for at folge udviklingen af Ter-processionen, som er vokset i bade storrelse og popularitet. Jeg vil derfor argumentere for, at processionen er blevet helt central for savel identitet som social sammenhaengskraft for de srilankansk-tamilske hinduer her i landet. Processionen kan ved at vaere offentlig kommunikere et bestemt tilhorsforhold bade indadtil og udadtil.

Śri Mātā Amṛtānandamayī Devī—The Global Worship of an Indian Female Guru

Eastspirit analyses ‘Eastern’ concepts, practices and traditions in their new ‘Western’ and global contexts as well as in their transformed expressions and reappropriations ‘back in the East’ within the framework of mutual interaction and circulation, regionally and globally.

Eastspirit: Transnational Spirituality and Religious Circulation in East and West

Eastspirit analyses ‘Eastern’ concepts, practices and traditions in their new ‘Western’ and global contexts as well as in their transformed expressions and reappropriations ‘back in the East’ within the framework of mutual interaction and circulation, regionally and globally.

Hvordan en lokaltradition bliver til i lyset af kulturmødets tredje-identiteter

The aim of this article, as exemplified by the Srilankan-Tamil Hindus, is to show how religion is changing in a cultural encounter and, in that perspective, how a local Danish-Tamil Hinduism is formed - a local tradition that you will not find anywhere else. This case study illustrates how a third identity comes into being, an identity shaped in the dialectic between the reshaped tradition and the elements of the same tradition that the members consider to be the key elements. It also shows how tradition as well as culture, identity and religion are dynamic phenomena which change along with the new environment and needs of the members.

Ritualets betydning for hinduer i udlændighed

Using the Srilankan-tamil Hindus in Denmark as an example, this article discusses the ways rituals can contribute to the making of identity in a cultural encounter and thus change the intentionality in Sri Lanka. This can result in either a ritual exclusiveness, where the Srilankan-tamil Hindues point out their religious particularity, or an enlargement, where a religious ritual becomes a common cultural expression among the Tamils whether they are Hindus, Muslims or Christians. At the same time the article emphasizes through these examples that the rituals must be understood as a category in and by itself and not in a combination with either myth or any text as put forward in the re.enactment theory.