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Reconceptualizing Belief: Insights from Older Christian Women

Explore the deep-rooted beliefs of older Christian women through their experiences living through cultural revolutions, church engagements, and faith evolution. Understand how beliefs transcend linguistic bounds, shaping identities, and worldviews.

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Reconceptualizing Belief: Insights from Older Christian Women

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  1. Beyond ‘a linguistic event’Reconceptualising what we might mean by belief: the example of some older Christian women Janet Eccles Lancaster University

  2. ‘Belief’ not simply ‘a linguistic event’ • Needham, R. (1972). Belief, Language, and Experience. Oxford, Basil Blackwell • Morgan, D. (2010a). Introduction: The Matter of Belief. In Religion and Material Culture: The Matter of Belief, ed. D. Morgan. London and New York, Routledge: 1-17. • Morgan, D. (2010b). Materiality, Social Analysis and the Study of Religions. In Religion and Material Culture: The Matter of Belief, ed. D. Morgan. London and New York, Routledge: 55-74.

  3. Somatic and material rather than literate and encoded • Woodhead, L. (2011). Five Concepts of Religion. International Review of Sociology 21(1): 121-43. • Lynch, G. (2010). Object Theory: Toward an Intersubjective, Mediated and Dynamic Theory of Religion. In Religion and Material Culture: The Matter of Belief, ed. D. Morgan. London and New York, Routledge: 40-54.

  4. Landscapes of feeling ‘Matter matters’ • Riis, O. and L. Woodhead (2010). A Sociology of Religious Emotion. Oxford, Oxford University Press. • Arweck, E. and W. Keenan, eds. (2006). Materializing Religion: Expression, Performance and Ritual. Aldershot and Burlington VT, Ashgate.

  5. Study of 70 older women • Data collected 2004-6 • South Cumbria • In-depth interview & participant observation • Women who have lived through the Cultural Revolution of sixties • Sample divided into Christian affiliates and disaffiliates

  6. Claire • It was from her that I learnt about faith. Mother and Father were Anglicans but they didn’t go to church much but Grandma and I devised services, when I got a bit older. She chose hymns, and we said prayers, had a little message, we took it in turns and we did this when Mum and Dad were out. Father was a headteacher and Mother a teacher so they weren’t at home during the day.

  7. Claire 2 • The Sunday schools all used to meet up, as they do in villages and we used to go to Bosley, which was my husband-to-be’s home, he was a farmer’s son……and I was friendly with all the village girls and boys.He used to come on his bike to different things in the Methodist church in Rushton….And er..well, we started going about together….Then he became a local preacher just as his father had done before him and …you know, very much engaged in the village chapel at Bosley.

  8. Claire 3 • and I suppose I turned to God for help………My mother used to say we packed the trunk with tears, she wasn’t happy either ……but I did pray to God for strength…….I can remember a lot of times lying on the bed and being in tears…. and I prayed .yes……to keep me all right and I suppose my faith deepened as a result.

  9. Trish • ...pretty soon stopped going to the Anglican Church. It wasn’t very good, very family oriented and not geared to single people at all. And….life was quite hard and it was just another extra difficulty…..which we could get rid of……...Work was difficult. Having mother living with us….. At that time I still had WIT and a small group…… liturgy groups, we called them. And I suppose I got my spiritual life via the Women’s Movement………well yes I ran a group in a village nearby.,……..we had a house group……..nothing to do with the churches. Some of the people in the group did go to church but this was just us ourselves.

  10. Trish 2 • ...part of a group’, she said. Somehow or other we need ... it’s a way of being a religious community. Nothing quite replaces that gathering. It’s a place to think of things of value, how we should live, the meaning of life… Now I’m by myself and living alone, (Trish’s partner has dementia and is in residential care) no family and you can feel very isolated…I need a community…yes, so I think the Quakers are the best I can join. I couldn’t join another church but I’m happy with the Quakers.

  11. Trish 3 • I mean, what sort of a god is that? If you knew a person who needed such worship I’d say they needed counselling, well, I mean, I suppose we all like to be worshipped … well to a degree(she laughs)…But I’m not into salvation, atonement ... trinity ...

  12. Thelma • You know, we never questioned anything. It’s one of the main…oh…crimes of the Catholic church…not being allowed to question anything and think things out. From the very beginning it was a penny catechism, Who made you? God made you. Why did God make you? God made me to love and serve him.. You see, I can remember it even now, off by heart, everything was off by heart, by rote no understanding.

  13. Conclusion • An ‘expectation that the world works in a certain way’ (Morgan, 2010a, 8) • Operates as a way of knowing and better still, a way of feeling • Burden of care being borne by women both in religious and non-religious contexts

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