Johan Roeland
Biographic Data
| ID | 654660 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Johan Roeland |
| GIVEN NAMES | Johan |
| FAMILY NAME | Roeland |
| SIGNATURE | ROELAND J |
| AFFILIATIONS | VU University Amsterdam, the Netherlands |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7248-4353 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 18 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 14 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Why we need to complicate things
Much knowledge production, both academic and non‐academic, is driven by a need to simplify the world in order to enable people to navigate the complexities of everyday life. Such simplifications not only risk offering less reliable representations of the world, they can also turn into disruptive and harmful images of the world. In this article, students and teachers in the field of religion and theology are encouraged to value scientific research…
Building blocks for developing a research question
A precisely formulated research question is becoming increasingly important within the humanities. This applies not only to research funding applications, but also to articles, papers, and student theses. This article presents a tool allowing students to develop research questions on their own, which is open enough to allow for a wide variety of research questions, while still giving users sufficient guidance to formulate a precise question. It a…
Buildings and Bibles Between Profanization and Sacralization
Based on an ethnographic case study of three recently erected church buildings in the Dutch Bible Belt, this article demonstrates how orthodox Reformed congregations in the Netherlands define church buildings-especially the auditoria-and bibles as simultaneously profane and mediating the sacred. These at first glance ambivalent discourses are informed by a particular semiotic ideology, which maintains that material spaces and objects like these a…
Click to Connect
This study is a qualitative study into the meaning that visitors derive from participating in the Dutch online church Mijn Kerk (litt. My Church). By focusing on the experience of the individual visitors, the everyday context of visitors is taken into account. What people are looking for online is determined by their relationship with the local church as well as further offline circumstances. This can be roughly divided into two categories: conne…
God changes people
One of the distinguishing characteristics of Evangelicalism is the conversion story. In this article we focus on the conversion stories of interviewees within the setting of several related Evangelical television programs broadcast in the Netherlands since the 1980s. We argue that the conversion story is construed through a particular view on and practice of authenticity. Thus we see that, in the televised conversion story, modes of authenticatio…
Contextual responses to interreligious encounters online
Increasingly, interreligious encounters occur through internet communication. The debate on the influence of internet communication on interreligious encounters is characterized by a contradiction between the theory of cyber-balkanization on the one hand and the theory of networked religion on the other. However, neither theory is contextualized and neither can therefore explain why an interreligious encounter results in either interreligious con…
Lived religion
Taking the case of“spiritual gardening”as a starting point, this paper reflects on praxis as the object of practical theology. Praxis is understood as the domain of lived religion and focuses on what people do rather than on official institutionalized religious traditions. Praxis refers to fields of practices like care or community building and to the patterned configurations of action, xperience, and meaning. In pluralized, secularized, and dein…
Close encounters
For many celebrities, organizing meet-and-greets with fans and followers has become a permanent feature of their public appearances. As yet little is known about the role and importance of such ‘unmediated’ encounters within the everyday constitution of celebrity culture. Why would fans be interested in the possibility of direct, personal contact with people they already know from the media? To find an answer to this question, this article presen…
Media, Spiritualities and Social Change
Contemporary Spirituality and the Making of Religious Experience
The ‘turn to experience’ has been described as one of the most defining characteristics of contemporary religion. Research on religion, and in particular on spirituality, therefore increasingly concentrates on the description of its experiential dimensions. The turn to experience, however, asks for something more than just the observation that a particular dimension (experience) has become of greater value for practitioners of religion. Dimension…
Beyond the domestication of nature? Restructuring the relationship between nature and technology in car commercials
It is often assessed that the construction of nature, technology and the relation between both is in the midst of a restructuring without specifying exactly what different articulations can be distinguished and how they differ from the modern notion of nature being separated from and domesticated by technology. Through an analysis of car commercials, this study develops a typology of constellations of nature and technology. Besides the well-known…
Can we dance in this place?”
This article describes the developments of the EO Youth Day, a Dutch Christian mass event that attracts thousands of young people every year. It is argued that in the course of time, the EO Youth Day has changed from a modest and sober event characterized by a Calvinist outlook to an expressive 'hip' event with an evangelical swing. This change becomes especially visible when the first versions of the EO Youth Day in the 1970s are compared with m…
Beyond individualisation
Young Christians may be less individualised than some widely shared reflections in the literature suggest. Even though their faith may no longer be exclusively or primarily nourished in the traditional institutional contexts of family, school and church, they often prefer their faith being lived and expressed in new forms of sociality such as festivals and virtual communities. The authors describe one particular current in contemporary Christiani…
Acceptation religieuse du moi
L'évangélisme américain possède une dimension thérapeutique marquée. Il répond à des incertitudes auxquelles le moi moderne est confronté et il a développé une forme de thérapie religieuse qui propose des outils et des techniques pour gérer ces incertitudes. L'auteur soutient que cette orientation thérapeutique est également caractéristique du mouvement néo-évangéliste, qui recueille un franc succès auprès des jeunes chrétiens néerlandais. Le néo…
Contemporary Spirituality and the Making of Religious Experience
The ‘turn to experience’ has been described as one of the most defining characteristics of contemporary religion. Research on religion, and in particular on spirituality, therefore increasingly concentrates on the description of its experiential dimensions. The turn to experience, however, asks for something more than just the observation that a particular dimension (experience) has become of greater value for practitioners of religion. Dimension…
Buildings and Bibles Between Profanization and Sacralization
Based on an ethnographic case study of three recently erected church buildings in the Dutch Bible Belt, this article demonstrates how orthodox Reformed congregations in the Netherlands define church buildings-especially the auditoria-and bibles as simultaneously profane and mediating the sacred. These at first glance ambivalent discourses are informed by a particular semiotic ideology, which maintains that material spaces and objects like these a…
God changes people
One of the distinguishing characteristics of Evangelicalism is the conversion story. In this article we focus on the conversion stories of interviewees within the setting of several related Evangelical television programs broadcast in the Netherlands since the 1980s. We argue that the conversion story is construed through a particular view on and practice of authenticity. Thus we see that, in the televised conversion story, modes of authenticatio…
Close encounters
For many celebrities, organizing meet-and-greets with fans and followers has become a permanent feature of their public appearances. As yet little is known about the role and importance of such ‘unmediated’ encounters within the everyday constitution of celebrity culture. Why would fans be interested in the possibility of direct, personal contact with people they already know from the media? To find an answer to this question, this article presen…
Beyond the domestication of nature? Restructuring the relationship between nature and technology in car commercials
It is often assessed that the construction of nature, technology and the relation between both is in the midst of a restructuring without specifying exactly what different articulations can be distinguished and how they differ from the modern notion of nature being separated from and domesticated by technology. Through an analysis of car commercials, this study develops a typology of constellations of nature and technology. Besides the well-known…
Can we dance in this place?”
This article describes the developments of the EO Youth Day, a Dutch Christian mass event that attracts thousands of young people every year. It is argued that in the course of time, the EO Youth Day has changed from a modest and sober event characterized by a Calvinist outlook to an expressive 'hip' event with an evangelical swing. This change becomes especially visible when the first versions of the EO Youth Day in the 1970s are compared with m…
Contextual responses to interreligious encounters online
Increasingly, interreligious encounters occur through internet communication. The debate on the influence of internet communication on interreligious encounters is characterized by a contradiction between the theory of cyber-balkanization on the one hand and the theory of networked religion on the other. However, neither theory is contextualized and neither can therefore explain why an interreligious encounter results in either interreligious con…
Acceptation religieuse du moi
L'évangélisme américain possède une dimension thérapeutique marquée. Il répond à des incertitudes auxquelles le moi moderne est confronté et il a développé une forme de thérapie religieuse qui propose des outils et des techniques pour gérer ces incertitudes. L'auteur soutient que cette orientation thérapeutique est également caractéristique du mouvement néo-évangéliste, qui recueille un franc succès auprès des jeunes chrétiens néerlandais. Le néo…
Beyond individualisation
Young Christians may be less individualised than some widely shared reflections in the literature suggest. Even though their faith may no longer be exclusively or primarily nourished in the traditional institutional contexts of family, school and church, they often prefer their faith being lived and expressed in new forms of sociality such as festivals and virtual communities. The authors describe one particular current in contemporary Christiani…
Contemporary Spirituality and the Making of Religious Experience
The ‘turn to experience’ has been described as one of the most defining characteristics of contemporary religion. Research on religion, and in particular on spirituality, therefore increasingly concentrates on the description of its experiential dimensions. The turn to experience, however, asks for something more than just the observation that a particular dimension (experience) has become of greater value for practitioners of religion. Dimension…
Beyond the domestication of nature? Restructuring the relationship between nature and technology in car commercials
It is often assessed that the construction of nature, technology and the relation between both is in the midst of a restructuring without specifying exactly what different articulations can be distinguished and how they differ from the modern notion of nature being separated from and domesticated by technology. Through an analysis of car commercials, this study develops a typology of constellations of nature and technology. Besides the well-known…
Can we dance in this place?”
This article describes the developments of the EO Youth Day, a Dutch Christian mass event that attracts thousands of young people every year. It is argued that in the course of time, the EO Youth Day has changed from a modest and sober event characterized by a Calvinist outlook to an expressive 'hip' event with an evangelical swing. This change becomes especially visible when the first versions of the EO Youth Day in the 1970s are compared with m…
Close encounters
For many celebrities, organizing meet-and-greets with fans and followers has become a permanent feature of their public appearances. As yet little is known about the role and importance of such ‘unmediated’ encounters within the everyday constitution of celebrity culture. Why would fans be interested in the possibility of direct, personal contact with people they already know from the media? To find an answer to this question, this article presen…
Media, Spiritualities and Social Change
Lived religion
Taking the case of“spiritual gardening”as a starting point, this paper reflects on praxis as the object of practical theology. Praxis is understood as the domain of lived religion and focuses on what people do rather than on official institutionalized religious traditions. Praxis refers to fields of practices like care or community building and to the patterned configurations of action, xperience, and meaning. In pluralized, secularized, and dein…
Contextual responses to interreligious encounters online
Increasingly, interreligious encounters occur through internet communication. The debate on the influence of internet communication on interreligious encounters is characterized by a contradiction between the theory of cyber-balkanization on the one hand and the theory of networked religion on the other. However, neither theory is contextualized and neither can therefore explain why an interreligious encounter results in either interreligious con…
God changes people
One of the distinguishing characteristics of Evangelicalism is the conversion story. In this article we focus on the conversion stories of interviewees within the setting of several related Evangelical television programs broadcast in the Netherlands since the 1980s. We argue that the conversion story is construed through a particular view on and practice of authenticity. Thus we see that, in the televised conversion story, modes of authenticatio…
Click to Connect
This study is a qualitative study into the meaning that visitors derive from participating in the Dutch online church Mijn Kerk (litt. My Church). By focusing on the experience of the individual visitors, the everyday context of visitors is taken into account. What people are looking for online is determined by their relationship with the local church as well as further offline circumstances. This can be roughly divided into two categories: conne…
Buildings and Bibles Between Profanization and Sacralization
Based on an ethnographic case study of three recently erected church buildings in the Dutch Bible Belt, this article demonstrates how orthodox Reformed congregations in the Netherlands define church buildings-especially the auditoria-and bibles as simultaneously profane and mediating the sacred. These at first glance ambivalent discourses are informed by a particular semiotic ideology, which maintains that material spaces and objects like these a…
Building blocks for developing a research question
A precisely formulated research question is becoming increasingly important within the humanities. This applies not only to research funding applications, but also to articles, papers, and student theses. This article presents a tool allowing students to develop research questions on their own, which is open enough to allow for a wide variety of research questions, while still giving users sufficient guidance to formulate a precise question. It a…
Why we need to complicate things
Much knowledge production, both academic and non‐academic, is driven by a need to simplify the world in order to enable people to navigate the complexities of everyday life. Such simplifications not only risk offering less reliable representations of the world, they can also turn into disruptive and harmful images of the world. In this article, students and teachers in the field of religion and theology are encouraged to value scientific research…
Sociology (12 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Epistemology (7 works) · Religion and Society Interactions (7 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Art (5 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Political science (5 works) · Psychology (5 works)