Table Of ContentSTRAYING FROM THE STRAIGHT PATH
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Studies in Social Analysis
General Editor: Martin Holbraad
University College London
Focusing on analysis as a meeting ground of the empirical and the
conceptual, this series provides a platform for exploring anthropological
approaches to social analysis while seeking to open new avenues of
communication between anthropology and the humanities, as well as other
social sciences.
Volume 1
Being Godless: Ethnographies of Atheism and Non-Religion
Edited by Ruy Llera Blanes and Galina Oustinova-Stjepanovic
Volume 2
Emptiness and Fullness: Ethnographies of Lack and Desire in Contemporary
China
Edited by Susanne Bregnbæk and Mikkel Bunkenborg
Volume 3
Straying from the Straight Path: How Senses of Failure Invigorate
Lived Religion
Edited by Daan Beekers and David Kloos
Forthcoming
Volume 4
Stategraphy: Toward a Relational Anthropology of the State
Edited by Tatjana Thelen, Larissa Vetters, and Keebet von Benda-Beckmann
Volume 5
Affective States: Entanglements, Suspensions, Suspicions
Edited by Mateusz Laszczkowski and Madeleine Reeves
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S
TRAYING FROM THE
S P
TRAIGHT ATH
How Senses of Failure Invigorate
Lived Religion
Edited by
Daan Beekers and David Kloos
berghahn
N E W Y O R K • O X F O R D
www.berghahnbooks.com
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Published in 2018 by
Berghahn Books
www.berghahnbooks.com
© 2018 Daan Beekers and David Kloos
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages
for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book
may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information
storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented,
without written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Beekers, Daan, editor | Kloos, David, editor.
Title: Straying from the straight path : how senses of failure invigorate
lived religion / edited by Daan Beekers and David Kloos.
Description: 1st [edition]. | New York : Berghahn Books, 2017. | Series:
Studies in social analysis ; Volume 3 | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017037774 (print) | LCCN 2017039750 (ebook) | ISBN
9781785337147 (ebook) | ISBN 9781785337130 (hardback : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Failure (Psychology)--Religious aspects. | Christianity and
other religions--Islam. | Islam--Relations--Christianity.
Classification: LCC BL629.5.F33 (ebook) | LCC BL629.5.F33 S77 2017 (print) |
DDC 202/.2--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017037774
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78533-713-0 (hardback)
ISBN 978-1-78533-714-7 (ebook)
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CONTENTS
Preface vii
Introduction: The Productive Potential of Moral Failure in Lived Islam
and Christianity
David Kloos and Daan Beekers 1
Chapter 1
In What Does Failure Succeed? Conceptions of Sin and the Role of
Human Moral Vulnerability in Pentecostal and Charismatic
Christianity
Joel Robbins and Leanne Williams Green 21
Chapter 2
“I’m a Weak Servant”: The Question of Sincerity and the Cultivation
of Weakness in the Lives of Dutch Salafi Muslims
Martijn de Koning 37
Chapter 3
Success, Risk, and Failure: The Brazilian Prosperity Gospel in
Mozambique
Linda van de Kamp 54
Chapter 4
Fitting God in: Secular Routines, Prayer, and Deceleration among
Young Dutch Muslims and Christians
Daan Beekers 72
Chapter 5
The Ethics of Not-Praying: Religious Negligence, Life Phase, and
Social Status in Aceh, Indonesia
David Kloos 90
– v –
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vi | Contents
Chapter 6
Moral Failure, Everyday Religion, and Islamic Authorization
Thijl Sunier 107
Epilogue: Religion, Lived Religion, and the “Authenticity” of Failure
Mattijs van de Port 124
Index 133
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PREFACE
The origin of this volume lies in a critical stance toward current anthropo-
logical debates about the religious lives of both Muslims and Christians. In
the past decade, studies of pious pursuits have become pitted against studies
that emphasize the incoherence of everyday religious lives. This book seeks
to move beyond this dichotomy. It focuses on experiences of moral failure in
order to explore how religious pursuits are shaped in interaction with, rather
than apart from, the contradictions and uncertainties of everyday life.
We are grateful to Bruce Kapferer and Knut Mikjel Rio, former editors
of Social Analysis, and their assistant Nora Haukali, who showed an initial
interest in this work, and to the current editor, Martin Holbraad, who took
over as the project was underway. We are also grateful to Vivian Berghahn
for her close involvement during the final stages of the project. In addition,
we acknowledge the assistance of all those at Berghahn Books who helped
in bringing this volume to publication, including Caroline Kuhtz, Ben Parker
and Kristyn Sanito. We also thank Sarah Sibley for her careful copy-editing of
the manuscript. Finally, we thank the anonymous reviewer, whose comments
helped us to improve the volume significantly.
– vii –
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JK
INTRODUCTION
The Productive Potential of Moral Failure in Lived Islam
and Christianity
David Kloos and Daan Beekers
This volume investigates the dialectical relationship between pursuits of
religious coherence and experiences of moral fragmentation by focusing on
self-perceived senses of failure. Our premise is that senses of failure offer an
important and productive entry point for the study of lived religion in today’s
world, where religious commitments are often volatile, believers are regu-
larly confronted by alternative lifestyles, worldviews or desires, and religious
subjects tend to be self-reflexive. While the experience of failure in religious
life has always been a central theme in theology and religious thought, it has
long received little attention in the study of lived religion by anthropologists
and others. In recent years, however, there has been a growing interest in
various modes and moments of (self-perceived) failure, including feelings of
incoherence and imperfection in religious life (Lechkar 2012; De Koning 2013;
Jouili 2015; Strhan 2015), uncertainty about one’s religious identity and the
risk of falling back on pre-conversion relationships or habits (Marshall 2009;
Pype 2011), doubt about religious truth claims (Luhrmann 2012; Liberatore
2013), ambivalent moral commitments (Schielke 2015), suspension or lack of
religious meaning (Engelke and Tomlinson 2006), and unsuccessful careers of
aspiring religious leaders (Lauterbach 2008).
We focus on Islam and Christianity, not only because these are the main
religious traditions in terms of adherents, but also because the anthropology of
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2 | David Kloos and Daan Beekers
Islam and the anthropology of Christianity have in recent years seen reconfigu-
rations that speak to the question of moral failure in crucial ways. A dichotomy
has emerged in this literature between two broad positions (in sketching these
positions, we do of course acknowledge the heterogeneity of approaches in
each one of these): on the one hand, a strong focus has been developed on the
cultivation of religious virtues and dispositions, as taking place in the context
of religious activist movements, moments of (mass) conversion, and other
instances in which religious truth claims take center stage (see, e.g., Harding
2000; Robbins 2004; Mahmood 2005; Hirschkind 2006). On the other hand, a
growing body of literature has taken a critical stance toward this emphasis on
the pursuit of ethical perfection in anthropological work. By pointing out the
tensions, struggles, paradoxes, contradictions and ambivalences central to pro-
cesses and instances of religious revival, conversion or the cultivation of piety,
these studies challenge the suggestion, explicitly or implicitly advanced within
the other perspective, that Muslims and Christians lead coherent, consistent
or stable religious lives (see, e.g., Marsden 2005; Scott 2005; Engelke and
Tomlinson 2006; Soares and Osella 2009; Schielke 2015). Indeed, the relatively
recent interest in failure in religious life on the part of anthropologists can at
least in part be seen as a response to the turn to personal piety and ethical
formation in the anthropologies of Islam and Christianity.
We embrace the heightened attention for the contingency of everyday
religious practices and experiences. Yet, we are critical of the tendency we
observe in this scholarship to maintain a separation between religious prac-
tices and aspirations on the one hand and alternative moral frameworks or
the sobering realities of everyday life on the other. Such an approach risks
analytically placing experiences of imperfection and incoherence outside of the
domain of religious experience “proper,” rather than examining the dynamic
and productive interactions between the two. By contrast, we aim to explore
how, and to what extent, self-perceived failure is part and parcel of processes
of ethical formation in lived Christianity and Islam. We suggest that senses
of failure—defined as experiences that religious adherents themselves under-
stand in terms of shortcoming, inadequacy, or imperfection, and that may
include feelings of struggle, the perception of sins, negligence of religious obli-
gations, and lack of religious confidence, faith, or belief—constitute a useful
avenue for further developing the anthropology of Islam and Christianity in
a broader framework of the anthropology of religion. The central question of
this book, then, is how senses of failure feed back into Islamic and Christian
ethical formation, by which we mean attempts at becoming “good” or “better”
Muslims or Christians.
In contrast to the hitherto largely separated fields of the anthropology of
Islam and Christianity, this volume approaches the problem of failure compar-
atively. We seek to move beyond the bifurcated study of religion (Soares 2006;
Beekers 2014; Janson and Meyer 2016), by taking a particular concern—in our
case everyday experiences of failure in religious life—as a productive entry
point for an analysis of lived religion across religious boundaries. The next two
sections serve to position this volume in current debates about the study of
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