ChristianMargiChristian Margins

This consortium project investigates the variety of new understandings of the "Christian" and Christian practice that continue to form, proliferate, and mutate in the "margins" of a contracting institutional Christian "mainstream" in Finland. One of the most significant among these marginal sites is the field of alternative spiritual healing and meditation practices. The project approaches this field as an important contemporary site of Christian religious rethinking and renewal through the lens of the co-constitution of "mainstreams" and "margins". Based on extensive empirical research of four cases (yoga, mindfulness, reiki and natual cures), the project employs a combination of discourse analytic and ethnographic apprioaches that devote equal attention to how the cases explored are constituted in both discourse and practice.

2025

2029