Religious Orthodoxy and Popular Faith in European Society

Abstract

By examining the ongoing tension between popular and official religion in Europe, this collection of essays contributes significantly to the continuing effort to understand the religious experience of ordinary people. Ranging from the Mediterranean to northern and including both Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions, the ethnographic contexts evoked in these essays enable us to see people actively and creatively shaping their religious domain, sometimes in collaboration with official ritual specialists, often in open rebellion against them. use of folklore texts and extensive narrative quotations, combined with an approach highlighting key symbols such as pilgrimages and festas, provides a common theoretical orientation throughout the bookone that considers how religious discourses are formed by social disciplines and relationships of power and subordination. This volume includes Spirits and the Spirit of Capitalism by Jane Schneider, The Priest and His People: Contractual Basis for Religious Practice in Rural Portugal by Caroline B. Brettell, The Struggle for the Church: Popular and Religiosity in Post-Franco Spain by Ruth Behar, Pilgrimage and Popular Religion at a Greek Holy Shrine by Jill Dubisch, Breton Folklore of Anticlericalism by Ellen Badone, Stories of Power, Powerful Stories: Drunken Priest in Donegal by Lawrence J. Taylor, and Reflections on the Study of Religious Orthodoxy and Popular Faith in Europe by Stanley Brandes.