Bloomsbury Academic Young Muslims and Christians in a Secular Europe: Pursuing Religious Commitment in the Netherlands

Revivalist-oriented Christians and Muslims particularly evangelicals and Salafis are among the most vibrant and fastest growing religious groups in the Western world. Challenging secular norms and assumptions, they are at the midst of renewed public and academic concerns about religion. Scholars have so far barely given attention to the potential convergences between these groups because the study of Islam and Christianity has been largely divided by longstanding disciplinary boundaries. Precarious Faith, by contrast, offers a comparative ethnographic study of religious commitment among young, revivalist Protestant Christians and Sunni Muslims in the Netherlands, commonly recognized as one of the most secular countries in Europe. Based on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork, Daan Beekers shows that these young Muslims and Christians embark on highly reflexive projects of cultivating personal piety. These pursuits of religious commitment, however, are rife with struggles, setbacks and doubts. As the religious convictions and practices of these young adults are challenged by competing modes of imagining and living in the world, their faith continuously risks moving to the background of their everyday lives. This study demonstrates that this shared predicament of a precarious faith is shaped by these young peoples active participation in todays high-capitalist, secular society. Strikingly, this close engagement with secular culture does not only constrain their religious commitment but also, paradoxically, bolsters it. The interplay between religious pursuits and prevalent secular dynamics results, among both the young Muslims and Christians, in a reinvigorated and self-conscious religious commitment that, as its flipside, demands constant nourishment. Review Challenging well-trodden fault lines that imagine Muslims and Christians as separate, Daan Beekers clears a conceptual space for the comparative study of religious plurality. An incisive intervention in the study of religion and society in Europe!Birgit Meyer, Professor of Religious Studies, Utrecht University, NetherlandsFew books approach recent developments in Christianity and Islam in a rigorous comparative manner-this is one. Daan Beekers convincingly shows that many Dutch religious-minded young people share very similar concerns and pathways.John Bowen, Professor of Anthropology, Washington University in St. Louis, USAIn this rich comparative ethnography, Daan Beekers explores how the pious pursuits of both young revivalist Christians and Muslims in the Netherlands become entangled with and fuelled by secular and capitalist dynamics. This nuanced account offers a compelling intervention into contemporary debates on religion and secularism in Europe and makes a strong case for the value of comparative analysis within the anthropology of religion.Giulia Liberatore, University of Edinburgh, UK About the Author Daan Beekers is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh, UK. He is co-editor of Straying from the Straight Path: How Senses of Failure Invigorate Lived Religion (2018) and his articles are published in Culture and Religion, Material Religion and Religie en samenleving [Religion and Society].