Fostering the sacred in a secular society: Catholic women practicing religion through intimate relationships

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article aims to contribute to the body of scholarship on lived religion by using intimate relationships as a lens in order to examine religiosity. Based on ethnographic research carried out among practicing Catholic women in Belgium, I unpack Catholic women’s understanding of the entanglement between religiosity and relationships by showing the ways in which these women perceive intimate relationships to enable—and at times hinder—their performance of religiosity. I draw on the study of lived religion in a twofold manner. Firstly, I mobilize it as an ethnographic tool to capture the experiences and practices of the women with respect to intimate relationships. Secondly, I contribute to the further theorization of the field by investigating religiosity and how religion is practiced in a non-religious setting, i.e. coupledom in a secular society. Hence, in this article I propose a novel road of inquiry that utilizes intimate relationships as a lens to understand how religion is enacted on an everyday basis. In doing so, we may come to see intimate relationships as a site where religiosity is constructed and performed, in particular against the background of a secularizing society in which Catholicism is no longer the default option as it once was.