Abstract
This article examines how members of a Christian youth organization in Sweden relate to and reflect upon emotional aspects of their involvement, looking at how they describe the emotional atmosphere within the groups they belong to and their role in creating and sustaining this, but also their experiences of not feeling comfortable in certain situations. The empirical material consists of interviews with youths aged 15–23, and the theoretical framework is centred on emotion work and feeling rules. The findings show how the emotional expectations tend to be communicated not only implicitly, but also explicitly, and how an emotional atmosphere and emotion work that can be expected to create affective bonds between the members and strengthen group cohesion, in somecases might have rather the opposite effect.
Highlights
This article examines how members of a Christian youth organization in Sweden relate to and reflect upon emotional aspects of their involvement, looking at how they describe the emotional atmosphere within the groups they belong to and their role in creating and sustaining this, and their experiences of not feeling comfortable in certain situations
The findings show how the emotional expectations tend to be communicated implicitly, and explicitly, and how an emotional atmosphere and emotion work that can be expected to create affective bonds between the members and strengthen group cohesion, in some cases might have rather the opposite effect
Concluding Discussion That the atmosphere within the local youth groups and congregations was described as characterized by love, forgiveness, compassion and encouragement, was, as demonstrated above, a recurring tendency throughout the interviews, and the atmosphere and sense of community were, often presented as contributing reasons for why the youths wanted to stay involved in Equmenia
Summary
This article examines how members of a Christian youth organization in Sweden relate to and reflect upon emotional aspects of their involvement, looking at how they describe the emotional atmosphere within the groups they belong to and their role in creating and sustaining this, and their experiences of not feeling comfortable in certain situations. In many of the interviews I made, the youths did, talk quite explicitly about what they had felt in a particular situation, or how they at times had experienced expectations of feeling certain things, or expressing their emotions in a specific way.
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