Religious agency, identity, and communication: reflections on history and theory of religion

Abstract

This paper discusses the applicability of recent theories of religion to the problem of describing and explaining religious transformation in the period between the final Bronze Age and Late Antiquity. Instead of evolutionist and cognitive approaches, it proposes a model of religion that tries to analyze religion in terms of its making by starting from the individual's appropriation and creation of religious tradition. Religion is understood as a strategy to attribute agency to agents that do not appear immediately plausible. Recent scholarly discussions on human agency suggest categorizing human religious agency into the three subsets, namely: (1) acting religiously with regards to past, present, and future; (2) collective religious identity; and (3) religious communication. These subsets are shown to produce fruitful questions for research on historical sources. Against this backdrop, religion is explained as a precarious cultural resource articulated through the agency of individuals and allowing changed attributions of individual agency.

Key Words:

• appropriation
• lived ancient religion
• religious agency
• collective identity
• religious communication
• religious change

Acknowledgments

I am in particular grateful to Martin Fuchs, Erfurt, and Volkhard Krech, Bochum, as well as the readers and editors of Religion, Michael Stausberg and Steven Engler, for extensive comments and critique. Thanks to Sandhya Fuchs, Antje Linkenbach, and Martin Fuchs for the polishing of the English text.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Funding

This paper has been elaborated within the research project ‘Lived Ancient Religion’ which has received funding from the European Union 7th Framework Program (FP7/2008-2013) under grant agreement no. 295555. It has benefitted from numerous discussions within the Kolleg-Forschergruppe ‘Religious Individualization in Historical Perspective,’ based at the University of Erfurt, and financed by the German Science Foundation (DFG) under KFOR 1013 and from discussion in the Religious Studies Department at Aarhus University, Anders Klostergaard Petersen, Arnim Geertz, and Jesper Sørensen above all.

Additional information

Jörg Rüpke is Vice-Director of the Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies of the University of Erfurt.