Abstract
Abstract This article explores the language negotiations among a group of Norwegian Christian Charismatic disaffiliates from a Facebook community called “The Journey” (no. “Reisen”). The analysis is based on 24 in-depth interviews and examines specific language practices of the disaffiliates, which I call translation-work. Translation-work involves substituting the religious meaning of Christian Charismatic concepts with secular meaning, allowing the term to remain in the disaffiliates’ vocabulary. Such language negotiations also reframe Charismatic experiences with secular words and actively omit relevant disaffiliation terms and concepts used in American discourse on disaffiliation. The Norwegian informants are particularly skeptical of victim-oriented terms even though they adequately fit such descriptions. The article discusses these omissions and how and why the informants engage in translation-work. It further suggests that established scholarly and popular disaffiliation terms do not precisely capture the nuances of non/religious language in this material. The article contributes to the field by providing thick descriptions of the informants’ negotiations and suggesting translation-work as a conceptualization, which gives us new sociological understandings of liminal non/religious language and experiences.
Published Version
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