Immigrant religiosity in a pluri-ethnic and pluri-religious metropolis: an initial impetus for a typology

Abstract

This article investigates which role a religion can play in the process of self-categorisation and in the process of affirmation and (re)construction of an ethnic and a larger social identity among (im)migrants in the pluri-ethnic metropolis of Brussels and how this religion can act as a modulating value of socio-cultural life. The article fits in with a broader research project verifying which types of supra-ethnic, meta-ethnic, and pure ethnic religiosity can be found in Brussels. If a religion adopts socio-cultural and ethnic classifications, what kind of community-building and communitydevelopment emerges and what kind of social project and worldview is the impetus? The research also verifies to what extent a number of different categories of immigrant religiosity can be used as an ‘analytical framework’ discerning in an ideal-typical way several forms of religious practice in a(n) (im)migration context. Such an ideal-typical classification is also an instrument of analysis in order to study the socio-cultural integration and (im)migration in terms of ‘religion’. A number of researchers state that the different forms of immigrant religiosity are decisive for the way in which the faithful experience their ‘ethnicity’ in a pluri-ethnic context and the way in which they develop the multi-ethnic and multi-cultural sociological appearance of a metropolis in the future. This article discusses in detail three modules of immigrant religiosity in Brussels. The research will examine how ‘different’ religious communities, based on the same Founding Text—the Bible—can be used in an orientation of a supra-ethnic, a meta-ethnic, or a pure ethnic self-affirmation. If religion operates as a marker of a particular ‘cultural’ or ‘ethnic’ identity, how does it cope with its universalistic message? The article focuses on Christianity, although with regard to Western European cities, at least Islam should also be discussed.