Category: English

The making of religious heritage

Irene Stengs Published: Categories: English

The proliferation of religious heritage seems to flow self-evidently from the processes of de-churching and secularization taking place in many European societies. Although having become redundant or outdated, certain religious buildings, objects or pr…

Religious heritage and change in the North

Irene Stengs Published: Categories: English

The current issue of Approaching Religion is based on a conference arranged in Åbo/Turku, Finland, in November 2022, with the theme ‘Religious Heritage and Change in the North’. The conference was organized jointly by the research network Religious His…

Wind of change

Irene Stengs Published: Categories: English

The value of diaconia is difficult to measure, its immaterial assets not easily grasped. In this article, I contribute to the area in analysing the perspective of 22 deacons on what is most important in their job and what could potentially be of greate…

Religious heritage in the North

Irene Stengs Published: Categories: English

The article takes as its point of departure the notion that the Scandinavian countries have been dominated by a monocultural Lutheranism. This notion is nuanced by focusing on everyday life and oppositional voices. In the nineteenth century, the Luther…

From church to museum and back again

Irene Stengs Published: Categories: English

In the small village of Kinnarumma in western Sweden an old wooden church was replaced by a new church buildning in the early twentieth century. The old church was de-sacralized by being moved to an open-air museum in Borås and used there for exhibitio…