Symbolic Pollution and Religious Change: The Religious Imaginary of Anglo-CanadianSpiritual but Not ReligiousMillennials
Dados Bibliográficos
AUTOR(ES) | |
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AFILIAÇÃO(ÕES) | University of Waterloo , Canada, Crandall University , Canada |
ANO | Não informado |
TIPO | Artigo |
PERIÓDICO | Sociology of Religion |
ISSN | 1069-4404 |
E-ISSN | 1759-6529 |
DOI | 10.1093/socrel/srae012 |
CITAÇÕES | 1 |
ADICIONADO EM | 2025-08-18 |
Resumo
In this article, we advance a cultural sociological approach to religious change that foregrounds the role of symbolic pollution and shifting religious imaginaries. Leveraging interviews with 50 Anglo-Canadian Millennials who identify as spiritual but not religious, and ethnographic research at three field sites, we sketch a religious imaginary comprising four discourses of 'religion.' According to our informants, 'religion' is (1) anti-modern; (2) conservative; (3) American; and (4) colonial. Next, we draw from a combination of modern intellectual history and social histories of twentieth-century Canada to trace each of these discourses genealogically, thereby elucidating how 'religion' became symbolically polluted for a large cohort of Canadian Millennials. We conclude with a discussion of the implications our account holds for secularization theory and the study of religious change more broadly.