2004
Volume 28, Issue 1
  • ISSN: 1388-3186
  • E-ISSN: 2352-2437

Abstract

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.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.5117/TVGN2025.1.004.BRAN
2025-04-01
2025-04-17
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

/deliver/fulltext/13883186/28/1/TVGN2025.1.004.BRAN.html?itemId=/content/journals/10.5117/TVGN2025.1.004.BRAN&mimeType=html&fmt=ahah

References

  1. Ahmed, S. (2014). Mixed orientations. Subjectivity, 7(1), 92–109.
    [Google Scholar]
  2. Avishai, O. (2008). “Doing religion” in a secular world: women in conservative religions and the question of agency. Gender and Society, 22(4), 409–433.
    [Google Scholar]
  3. Bracke, S. (2008). Conjugating the modern/religious, conceptualizing female religious agency: contours of a “post-secular” conjuncture. Theory, Culture & Society25(6), 51–67.
    [Google Scholar]
  4. Brittenden, P.J.S. (2023). Liberating liminality in the contemporary church of Algeria’, in Z.Hadromi-Allouche & M.H.Mckay (Eds.), Betwixt and Between Liminality and Marginality (pp. 37–54), London: Lexington Books.
    [Google Scholar]
  5. Davidman, L. (2015). Becoming Un-Orthodox: Stories of Ex-Hasidic Jews. Oxford: OUP.
    [Google Scholar]
  6. Davis, T., & Paramanathan, G. (2023). Liminal (trans)formative spaces: a temporary escape from intersectionality. The Journal of Consumer Affairs, DOI: 10.1111/joca.12532
    [Google Scholar]
  7. Demeijer, F. (2020). Over Apostolisch Zijn Gesproken… Zes Generaties Lidmaten over de Rol van het Apostolisch Genootschap in hun Leven. Utrecht: Eburon.
    [Google Scholar]
  8. Doorenspleet, R. (2020). Apostelkind: In de Greep van een Gesloten Gemeenschap. Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Balans.
    [Google Scholar]
  9. Gaddini, K. (2023). The Struggle to Stay: Why Single Evangelical Women Are Leaving the Church. New York: Colombia University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  10. Gallonier, J. (2018). ‘Moving in or moving toward? reconceptualizing conversion to Islam as a liminal process’, in K.van Nieuwkerk (Ed.), Moving In and Out of Islam (pp. 44–66). Austin: Texas University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  11. Gardner, C.J. (2017). “Created this way”: liminality, rhetorical agency, and the transformative power of constraint among gay Christian college students. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 14(1), 31–47.
    [Google Scholar]
  12. Izharuddin, A. (2019). ‘After the hijab: liminal states of post-veiling embodiment’, in V.Thimm (Ed.), (Re-)Claiming Bodies Through Fashion and Style: Gendered Configurations in Muslim Contexts (pp. 173 – 189). Cham: Palgrave MacMillan.
    [Google Scholar]
  13. Kirk, K., Bal, E., & Janssen, S.R. (2017). Migrants in liminal time and space: an exploration of the experiences of highly skilled Indian bachelors in Amsterdam. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 43(16), 2771–2787.
    [Google Scholar]
  14. Mahmood, S. (2005). The Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  15. Prior, J., & Cusack, C.M. (2008). Ritual, liminality and transformation: secular spirituality in Sydney’s gay bathhouses. Australian Geographer, 39(3), 271–281.
    [Google Scholar]
  16. Rantala, T. (2023). Following the views of young former Conservative Laestadian women on reproductive freedom, procreational ethos, and pronatalist politics. NORA – Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, 31(3), 222–235.
    [Google Scholar]
  17. Robertson, N.2018. The power and subjection of liminality and borderlands of non-binary folx. Gender Forum, 69, 45–59.
    [Google Scholar]
  18. Sharman, R.L. (2001). The Caribbean carretera: race, space and social liminality in Costa Rica. Bulletin of Latin American Research, 20(1), 46–62.
    [Google Scholar]
  19. Turner, K. (2019). Convertitis and the struggle with liminality for female converts to Islam in Australia. Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions, 186, 71–91.
    [Google Scholar]
  20. Turner, V. (1967). Betwixt-and-between: the liminal period in rites de passage. In The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual (pp. 60–92). London: Cornell University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  21. Turner, V. (1969). The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago: Aldine.
    [Google Scholar]
  22. Van den Brandt, N., & Rantala, T. (2024). Gendered and embodied un/learning among women disengaging from faith in the UK and Finland. Approaching Religion, 14(2), 224–239.
    [Google Scholar]
  23. Van Lieburg, F. (2023). Voorbij de nationale kerkenstamboom: naar een inclusieve genealogie van het christendom in Nederland. Religie & Samenleving, 18(3), 177–198.
    [Google Scholar]
  24. Vliek, M. (2023). Let’s talk about gender: women’s narratives of moving out of Islam in contemporary Europe. Religion and Gender, 13(2), 227–253.
    [Google Scholar]
  25. Watling, T. (2006). Religious orthodoxy as popular belief: calling, diversity and dynamism in Reformed Protestant religion in the Netherlands. Modern Believing, 47(2), 24–43.
    [Google Scholar]
  26. Willet, J., & Deegan, M.J. (2001). Liminality and disability: rites of passage and community in hypermodern society. Disability Studies Quarterly, 21(3), 137–152.
    [Google Scholar]
  27. Willey, R.D. (2016). Liminal practice: Pierre Bourdieu, madness, and religion. Social Compass, 63(1), 125–141.
    [Google Scholar]
  28. Zion-Waldoks, T. (2015). Politics of devoted resistance: agency, feminism, and religion among orthodox agunah activists in Israel. Gender & Society, 29(1), 73–97.
    [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.5117/TVGN2025.1.004.BRAN
Loading
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a Success
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error