‘Everyone who wants to, can be a Körtti’: how young people negotiate the religious space of a revivalist movement

ABSTRACT

19th century Protestant revivalist movements have played an important role in Nordic societies at large. In this article, I explore young people’s socio-spatial construction of the Awakening movement, one of the largest traditional yet vibrant revivalist movements under the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland. In doing so, I aim to reveal how youths define their collective religious identity in a time when non-institutional and private emphasis on religion prevails. In addition, vague membership, ritual-centred participation, and the significance of the annual gathering raise topical questions regarding belonging. I build my analysis on Henri Lefebvre’s theory of the production of social space. The research data consist of interviews with young people (aged 14–18) and the narratives the young people wrote themselves. These data are complemented with my observations from the movement’s summer gathering. The findings reveal the agency of the young people as ‘inhabitants’ (Lefebvre) of tradition-based religious space.

KEYWORDS:

• Revivalist movement
• young people
• religious space
• Henri Lefebvre
• rituals
• belonging

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. All quotes are originally in Finnish, and have been translated by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Kone Foundation [088665].