Vernacular religion on the prairies: negotiating a place for the unquiet dead

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe study of vernacular religion looks at faith as it is lived and emphasizes praxis. Research conducted among Ukrainian Canadians living on the prairies shows that the location where beliefs are expressed plays a role in the relationship between individual religion, folk religion, and official religion. Vernacular religion is freely expressed in the home, while its expression within the confines of the church is constrained. Negotiation, sometimes leading to change in church policy, takes place in cemeteries. As parishioners change their definition of personhood and see stillborn babies as human, as they come to consider suicide to be the result of illness rather than sin, their new views can affect the burial practices of their church, forcing it to include previously excluded persons in the sanctified ground of the cemetery.