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Lived religion


Lived religion is the ethnographic and holistic framework for understanding the beliefs, practices, and everyday experiences of religious and spiritual persons in religious studies. The name lived religion comes from the French tradition of sociology of religion "la religion vécue."

The concept of lived religion was popularized in the late 20th century by religious study scholars like Robert A. Orsi and David D. Hall. The study of lived religion has come to include a wide range of subject areas as a means of exploring and emphasizing what a religious person does and what they believe. Today, the field of lived religion is expanding to include many topics and scholars.

Robert A. Orsi is Professor of Religious Studies and History and Grace Craddock Nagle Chair in Catholic Studies at Northwestern University. He researches, writes, and teaches about religion in the United States, in the past and in contemporary contexts, with a particular focus on American Catholicism. Orsi’s book The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith And Community In Italian Harlem, 1880-1950, won several prizes including the Jesuit National Book Award and is an example study of lived religion.

Orsi defines lived religion as including “the work of social agents/actors themselves as narrators and interpreters (and reinterpreters) of their own experiences and histories, recognizing that the stories we tell about others exist alongside the many and varied story they tell of them selves”. Orsi understands lived religion to be centered on the actions and interpretations of religious person.

In order to study and write about lived religion Orsi suggests a broad field of study in terms of topic matter and methodology. Orsi describes his own process of studying lived religion for Madonna On 115th Street as wide in scope: “I came to realize that I was learning as much from how people were to me as from what they were telling me, as much as what was going on around the stories as from the stories themselves.” Rather than a narrow archival study, Orsi’s focus on non-traditional forms of research demands that scholars give attention to institutions and persons, texts and rituals, practices and theology, things and ideas. In order to study lived religion, Orsi advocates for a complex academic lens where almost anything can hold meaning and serve as a source or text for study.


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