Abstract
Over the last decades, religious forms of solidarity have (re)emerged and adopted new, often unclear roles in already defined but rapidly changing local European welfare mixes. Building on geographical accounts of the ‘postsecular’, this paper intends to fill this lacuna by exploring the ways in which evangelical churches and Faith-Based Organisations (FBO’s) construct localized practices and discourses of solidarity in interaction with secular public authorities and public social centers. Through (visual) document analysis, interviews and participant observation in five evangelical churches and three evangelical FBO’s in the Belgian cities of Ghent and Antwerp, it particularly examines the conditions conducive for so-called postsecular learning processes and rapprochements to emerge, in which potential religious-secular boundaries are overcome through issues of sharing and redistribution. The paper concludes that for religious players to be truly involved in formal welfare systems, they need to enter into sustainable, mutually recognized structures which allow for enduring negotiations of faith differences. It also demonstrates the need to complement the geographical postsecular framework with a focus on political opportunity structures and the context-contingencies shaping them.
Presenters
Lise DheedenePhD Student, Sociology, University of Antwerp, West-Vlaanderen (nl), Belgium
Details
Presentation Type
Theme
KEYWORDS
Postsecular, Solidarities, Local Welfare Mix, Evangelical Churches and FBO's, Belgium
