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A few years ago, the author switched from working at a Protestant theological faculty to a department of religious studies where the study of religion from an anthropological perspective is dominant. He starts by offering a reflection on the somatic turn in the study of religion and gender, presenting its most relevant disciplinary perspectives. The author moves on to discuss how the study of bodies and embodiment challenges existing ontologies and epistemologies, followed by a section on the limits of and challenges involved in a focus on the body. Over the past few decades, the humanities and social sciences have been witness to a ‘somatic turn’: a turn toward the body as a central category of analysis. The somatic turn in the study of religion has been ongoing for a number of decades now. The somatic turn has had, as the author hope the chapter has demonstrated, an important impact on the study of religion and gender.

Het Centraal orgaan opvang asielzoekers (COA) is verantwoordelijk voor de opvang en begeleiding van asielzoekers en zet zich in om een veilige omgeving te bieden voor alle asielzoekers op de opvanglocaties. Desondanks komen er met enige regelmaat signalen van intimidatie en geweld tegen LHBTI-asielzoekers, bekeerlingen en religieverlaters in de asielopvang. Regioplan en de Vrije Universiteit deden in opdracht van het WODC onderzoek naar de opvang en begeleiding van deze groepen en hoe deze verbeterd kan worden.

This chapter provides various accounts that explore the relations between transforming bodies and religion from an amalgamation of theoretical perspectives. A variety of political, social, and economic transformations have influenced the perception of religion in Europe. In other words, religions are practised in everyday lives and given meaning through the day-to-day negotiations and experiences by both laypeople and clergy. Various attempts of identifying religion and secularity are examined to understand how constructions of (what is propagated as) the religious and the irreligious take place in society, but in particular how these acts of identification relate to transforming bodies. In particular, by focusing on these acts of identification, the authors show how categories of religion and secularity are enmeshed with, or even used as a distraction for, processes of inclusion and exclusion along the axes of class, ethnicity, race, and gender. Religion has played an important role in colonialism and continues to be a marker of difference among many people globally.

This chapter explores the formation of religious and gender scripts in two types of transformation narratives, namely those of religious conversion and transgender transition. These two types of transformation are closely related. Religious conversions almost always include a certain degree of gender transformation, such as adopting rituals that affirm gender identity in new ways. Likewise, transgender transitions are often narrated in ways reminiscent of the traditional Protestant conversion plot (Prosser 1998). I will argue that a dialogue between transgender studies and conversion studies as ‘disciplines of personal transition’ is helpful in understanding the formation, fixedness, and fluidity of the scripts of religion and gender that underlie processes of identity-formation in present-day Western culture. I demonstrate this approach by discussing embodied transition in two transition narratives in the context of Judaism. The analysis is based on two autobiographies that highlight gendered and/or religious transformation in the context of Judaism: Uncovered (2012), in which Leah Lax narrates her conversion to and then departure from Hasidic Judaism, and Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey Between Genders (2012), by Joy Ladin.

Om te onderzoeken hoe sport, religie en gender zich tot elkaar verhouden volgt dit artikel de levensloop de Franse voetballer Franck Ribéry, die zich in 2004 tot de islam bekeerde. Welke aannames over religie en gender gaan er schuil achter de wijze waarop zijn bekering in de media besproken wordt?

This chapter argues that current (homo)nationalism must be placed in a historical genealogy. The case study focuses on the Second German Empire, wherein the discourse of political crisis was represented by a “male gender crisis,” which revolved round the Kaiser and his alleged “homosexual” circle. Just as with debates within the incipient gay movement, the discourse focused on the dispositive of “normal masculinity” as representative of the nation/state. This chapter addresses a religious contour of, and possible Jewish inflection in, this discursive constitution of homosexualities. The sexualization of Jewish religion played a significant role in marking an internal differentiation between an “effeminate,” “degenerate” Jewish inversion and an “ultra-virile,” Aryan, and state-supportive homosexuality of the “masculinists” around Hans Bluher. They were the right-wing, antisemitic part of the early gay rights movement in Germany. Their key model of an ideal state became the homoerotic “male band” as a misogynist and antisemitic form of male society.

This chapter highlights stories of women’s conversion in contemporary Western European contexts. Theorising the connections among religion, storytelling, identity, subject-formation, and conversion, the chapter conceptualises conversion stories as enabling individual subjects to negotiate a terrain of difference and transformation, including multiple dimensions of belonging. On the basis of a critical operationalisation of Wohlrab-Sahr’s (1999) analytical concepts of ‘syncretism’ and ‘symbolic battle’, the analysis focuses on four memoirs written by women who turn to Judaism and Islam, and looks at motivations for conversion, and understandings of the past and present and different selves. The case studies show that the memoirs construct lifeworlds and selves on a continuum of syncretic and symbolic battle scripts. They moreover demonstrate that converts’ experiences need to be situated within the respective religious traditions, as well as within larger discourses about Judaism and Islam in Western Europe. As such, the chapter contributes empirical insights into experiences of religious, social, and gendered trajectories of conversion/transformation. Moreover, it connects empirical converts’ experiences of becoming Jewish or Muslim to theorising the positions of Judaism and Islam as minoritised traditions and communities in Western Europe.

This chapter investigates the secular body in the Dutch field of sexual health, the setting where the author conducted 13 months of anthropological fieldwork. The chapter explores this body from two different angles. First, it investigates the discursive field in which this body is situated in and constituted by. How do people working for sexual health organisations think the body should look and behave? What kind of behaviour and bodily appearance is advocated by these organisations? Second, the chapter draws on autoethnography to explore this body by examining the author’s experiences as a sexuality educator. On which occasions did he perceive himself to be failing as a sex educator? What do these experiences tell about the body and the expectations people have regarding a sex educator? By combining these two approaches to the body, the chapter explores the embodied configurations implicitly articulated and discouraged in Dutch sexuality education classes. In conclusion, the chapter reflects on what these insights tell us about secularity and the bodies that it seeks to cultivate.

This chapter provides various accounts that explore the relations between transforming bodies and religion from an amalgamation of theoretical perspectives. A variety of political, social, and economic transformations have influenced the perception of religion in Europe. In other words, religions are practised in everyday lives and given meaning through the day-to-day negotiations and experiences by both laypeople and clergy. Various attempts of identifying religion and secularity are examined to understand how constructions of (what is propagated as) the religious and the irreligious take place in society, but in particular how these acts of identification relate to transforming bodies. In particular, by focusing on these acts of identification, the authors show how categories of religion and secularity are enmeshed with, or even used as a distraction for, processes of inclusion and exclusion along the axes of class, ethnicity, race, and gender. Religion has played an important role in colonialism and continues to be a marker of difference among many people globally.

This chapter explores the formation of religious and gender scripts in two types of transformation narratives, namely those of religious conversion and transgender transition. These two types of transformation are closely related. Religious conversions almost always include a certain degree of gender transformation, such as adopting rituals that affirm gender identity in new ways. Likewise, transgender transitions are often narrated in ways reminiscent of the traditional Protestant conversion plot (Prosser 1998). I will argue that a dialogue between transgender studies and conversion studies as ‘disciplines of personal transition’ is helpful in understanding the formation, fixedness, and fluidity of the scripts of religion and gender that underlie processes of identity-formation in present-day Western culture. I demonstrate this approach by discussing embodied transition in two transition narratives in the context of Judaism. The analysis is based on two autobiographies that highlight gendered and/or religious transformation in the context of Judaism: Uncovered (2012), in which Leah Lax narrates her conversion to and then departure from Hasidic Judaism, and Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey Between Genders (2012), by Joy Ladin.

Vragen over genderidentiteit gaan vaak gepaard met een religieuze en/of spirituele zoektocht. Deze dimensie van transgender zijn en/of in transitie gaan komt echter lang niet altijd aan bod bij de genderpoli waar transgender personen medisch en psychologisch begeleid worden in hun transitie. Ook bij zelfhulporganisaties stelt men zich soms terughoudend op wanneer het over religie gaat. Dit artikel gaat in op de samenhang tussen transgender zijn, religie en spiritualiteit. De auteurs presenteren de resultaten van onderzoek naar de behoefte aan geestelijke verzorging onder transgender personen in Nederland. Net als het onderzoek van Maud van Klaveren en collega’s heeft dit onderzoek plaatsgevonden in het VUmc.