Full Description
If piety, faith, and conviction constitute one side of the religious coin, then imperfection, uncertainty, and ambivalence constitute the other. Yet, scholars tend to separate these two domains and place experiences of inadequacy in everyday religious life - such as a wavering commitment, religious negligence or weakness in faith - outside the domain of religion 'proper.'
Straying from the Straight Path breaks with this tendency by examining how self-perceived failure is, in many cases, part and parcel of religious practice and experience. Responding to the need for comparative approaches in the face of the largely separated fields of the anthropology of Islam and Christianity, this volume gives full attention to moral failure as a constitutive and potentially energizing force in the religious lives of both Muslims and Christians in different parts of the world.
Contents
Preface
Introduction: The Productive Potential of Moral Failure in Lived Islam and Christianity
David Kloos and Daan Beekers
Chapter 1. In What Does Failure Succeed? Conceptions of Sin and the Role of Human Moral Vulnerability in Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity
Joel Robbins and Leanne Williams Green
Chapter 2. "I'm a Weak Servant": The Question of Sincerity and the Cultivation of Weakness in the Lives of Dutch Salafi Muslims
Martijn de Koning
Chapter 3. Success, Risk and Failure: The Brazilian Prosperity Gospel in Mozambique
Linda van de Kamp
Chapter 4. Fitting God in: Secular Routines, Prayer and Deceleration among Young Dutch Muslims and Christians
Daan Beekers
Chapter 5. The Ethics of Not-Praying: Religious Negligence, Life Phase and Social Status in Aceh, Indonesia
David Kloos
Chapter 6. Moral Failure, Everyday Religion and Islamic Authorization
Thijl Sunier
Epilogue: Religion, Lived Religion and the 'Authenticity' of Failure
Mattijs van de Port
Index
