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oa Dissenting Daughters
Women’s Orthodox Calvinist and Apostolic Religious Exits in the Netherlands
- Amsterdam University Press
- Source: Tijdschrift voor Genderstudies, Volume 28, Issue 1, Apr 2025, p. 50 - 67
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- 01 Apr 2025
Abstract
This article explores women’s religious exit in the Netherlands. It draws on life story interviews with women who disengaged from orthodox Calvinist churches and Apostolic communities. Women’s religious exit is assessed in terms of experiences of liminality, with a focus on negotiations of notions of self, others and belonging. In conversation with the empirical data, liminality is conceptualised as a gendered two-fold trajectory of transformation at the level of faith and knowledge, and social relations. I suggest that a perspective on intersectional liminality helps us deepen our understanding of how women leave their religious traditions, and more specifically, what it means to disengage from encapsulating religious communities in a Western European context.