Conceptualizing lived religious citizenship: a case-study of Christian and Muslim women in Norway and the United Kingdom |
| |
Authors: | Line Nyhagen |
| |
Affiliation: | Department of Social Sciences, Loughborough University, Loughborough LE11 3TU, UK |
| |
Abstract: | The concept of ‘religious citizenship’ is increasingly being used by scholars, but there are few attempts at defining it. This article argues that rights-based definitions giving primacy to status and rights are too narrow, and that feminist approaches to citizenship foregrounding identity, belonging and participation, as well as an ethic of care, provide a more comprehensive understanding of how religious women understand and experience their own ‘religious citizenship’. Findings from interviews with Christian and Muslim women in Oslo and Leicester suggest a close relationship between religious women's faith and practice (‘lived religion’) and their ‘lived citizenship’. However, gender inequalities and status differences between majority and minority religions produce challenges to rights-based approaches to religious citizenship. |
| |
Keywords: | citizenship religious citizenship lived religion gender and religion women and Islam women and Christianity |
|
|