religious london: faith in a global city

This article analyses perceived anti-Christian prejudice reported by Christian adolescents in England. A more nuanced approach is then proposed, based on students’ personal narratives obtained through questionnaires and interviews, categorising individuals according to the overarching narrative through which they claim to interact with (non)religion.'Ĭhristians’ experiences of anti-Christian prejudice are relatively unexplored in sociological research. These identities also vary in terms of concreteness and salience, and are informed by a wide variety of relationship- and education-based subjective experiences.

Nonreligious students are shown to be highly aware of the subjectivity of their interpretations of key identity terms, and in many cases they maintain multiple identities simultaneously, in a situational and pragmatic fashion. In addition to raising informative questions, the author demonstrates that the limited number of current typologies, based on internally and/or externally selected and defined nonreligious identity labels, tend to be inadequate and inaccurate. Through questionnaires and in-depth interviews, this study explores this neglected area, examining: if and how religious/non-religious/irreligious identities are constructed the importance of religion/nonreligion versus other sources of significance and the subjective meanings ascribed to key emic terms. Similar studies are virtually non-existent in the UK, and in the US, nonreligious students tend to be ignored or treated as a monolithic religious minority. 'This paper documents a yearlong project amongst the student body of the University of Edinburgh, under the supervision of Dr Steven Sutcliffe, focussing on ‘nonreligious’ undergraduates - whether explicitly irreligious/undecided, those occupying the ‘fuzzy middle’, or those termed ‘nominal’ believers.

Religious london: faith in a global city