Folklore, Religion and Contemporary Spirituality: Virtual Special Issue 2, 2011

Virtual Special Issues of Folklore

Folklore Virtual Special Issues are unique collections of articles, editorials, and podcasts, handpicked by the editor.

Each issue examines a particular theme within the discipline of folklore, offering original insights into a range of fascinating and curious topics.

The special editor of this Folklore, Religion and Contemporary Spirituality VSI is Marion Bowman. Listen to the podcast introduction by Juliette Wood and check out the Featured Articles and further reading from Folklore, which are free for Folklore Society members to download.

Download the podcast by Juliette Wood

Excerpt from the podcast:

From these six articles we get some flavour of the myriad nuances, multiple histories and contextual detail that must be taken into account when trying to understand and analyse religion as it is lived. The reality and diversity of religion resides in “the totality of all those views and practices of religion that exist among the people apart from and alongside the strictly theological and liturgical forms of the official religion,” as Don Yoder elegantly put it (Yoder 1974, 14). However, too often “popular” or “folk” beliefs, customs, material culture and practices outside a narrowly reified concept of “official religion” have been devalued or dismissed as quaint, mistaken, superstitious or deviant, not simply by polemicists assuming right is on their side, but by scholars of religion. As Norman Primiano has commented, however, “One of the hallmarks of the study of religion by folklorists has been their attempt to do justice to belief and lived experience” (Primiano 1995, 41). Particular aspects of folklore studies which complement the study of both “traditional” religion and contemporary/“alternative” spirituality include the disinclination to privilege written over oral forms; the recognition that belief spills over into every aspect of behaviour; and the appreciation of the dynamic nature of tradition, characterised by Henry Glassie as “the creation of the future out of the past” (Glassie 1995, 395).

Download the transcript