Sara Cathrine Lei Sparre

Middle Eastern Christian spaces in Europe: multi-sited and super-diverse

Despite little scholarly attention, Middle Eastern Christian Churches are a well-established element of the European religious landscape. Based on collaborative research, this article examines how three mutual field visits facilitated a deeper understanding of the complexity that characterises church establishment and activities among Iraqi, Assyrian/Syriac and Coptic Orthodox Christians in the UK , Sweden and Denmark. Exploring analytical dimensions of space, diversity, size, and minority position we identify three positions of Middle Eastern Christians: in London as the epitome of super-diversity, in Copenhagen as a silenced minority within a minority, and in Sodertalje as a visible majority within a minority.

Incense and Holy Bread: The Sense of Belonging through Ritual among Middle Eastern Christians in Denmark

ABSTRACT This article investigates how two Middle Eastern Christian churches in Denmark are constructed as particular sensorial spaces that invite attendees to participate in and identify with specific times and spaces. As with other Christian groups, rituals of the Sunday mass constitute a highlight of the activities that confirm the congregations’ faith and community, but for members of a minority faith, these rituals also serve other functions related to identification and belonging. Inspired by a practice-oriented [Bell, Catherine. (1992). Ritual Practice, Ritual Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press] and phenomenological approach to place-making [Cresswell, Tim. (2002). “Introduction: Theorizing Place.” In Mobilizing Place, Placing Mobility: The Politics of Representation in a Globalized World, edited by Ginette Verstraete and Tim Cresswell, 11–32. Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi B.V.] through sensory communication [Leistle, Bernard. (2006). “Ritual as Sensory Communication: A Theoretical and Analytical Perspective.” In Ritual and Identity: Performative Practices as Effective Transformations of Social Reality, edited by Klaus-Peter Köpping, Bernhard Leistle, and Michael Rudolph, 33–74. Berlin: LIT Verlag; Pink, Sarah. (2009). Doing Sensory Ethnography. London: Sage], the article examines constructions of religious identity and belonging through ritual practices. The findings stem from fieldwork carried out in 2014–2015 and are part of a larger cross-disciplinary study of Egyptian, Iraqi and Assyrian Christians in Denmark. We argue that in various ways, the ritual forms a performative space for memory and belonging which, through bodily practices and engagement with the materialities of the church rooms, creates a memory that reconnects the practitioners with places elsewhere. More specifically, we argue that the Sunday ritual facilitates the connection with God and the eternal, a place and time with fellow believers, and a relocation to remember and re-enter a pre-migration past and ‘homeland’.

Experimenting with alternative futures in Cairo: young Muslim volunteers between god and the nation

ABSTRACT This article investigates young middle-class Egyptians’ engagement with the religious and national visions of Resala, Egypt’s largest Muslim youth NGO, and how they come to rethink themselves existentially and politically through this commitment, in the context of the 2011 uprising and its aftermath. I show how their volunteering through Resala, shaped by specific sociopolitical circumstances, paved the way for personal hopes to develop into utopian aspirations. Demonstrating the dynamic relationship between the formation of political subjectivities and how utopias emerge, develop and are sometimes shattered, I argue that while utopic aspirations continue to characterise parts of Egypt’s 2011 youth generation, for others, such aspirations have to give way for other more personal concerns to establish a secure adult life. Therefore, activism and experiments with societal alternatives in contexts like the Egyptian continue to depend on inclusive and less risky spaces for civic engagement outside formal politics and institutions.