Drawing together previously disjointed scholarship on the topic of asylum and conversion from Islam to Christianity, this book shows how boundaries of belonging are negotiated between Middle Eastern ex-Muslim asylum seekers, church representatives, lawyers, legal decision-makers and policymakers. With case studies from European countries such as Germany, Austria, Finland and Sweden, the book takes an interdisciplinary approach including ethnographic and other qualitative research, discourse analysis and case law analysis, to explore the complexities of the phenomenon of asylum and conversion from Islam to Christianity. This book is an authoritative resource for academic scholars in fields as diverse as migration and refugee studies, anthropology, sociology, religious studies, law and socio-legal studies, as well as legal and religious practitioners.

Drawing together previously disjointed scholarship on the topic of asylum and conversion from Islam to Christianity, this book shows how boundaries of belonging are negotiated between Middle Eastern ex-Muslim asylum seekers, church representatives, lawyers, legal decision-makers and policymakers. With case studies from European countries such as Germany, Austria, Finland and Sweden, the book takes an interdisciplinary approach including ethnographic and other qualitative research, discourse analysis and case law analysis, to explore the complexities of the phenomenon of asylum and conversion from Islam to Christianity. This book is an authoritative resource for academic scholars in fields as diverse as migration and refugee studies, anthropology, sociology, religious studies, law and socio-legal studies, as well as legal and religious practitioners.

The Handbook of Leaving Religion introduces a neglected field of research with the aim to outline previous and contemporary research, and suggest how the topic of leaving religion should be studied in the future. The handbook consists of three sections: 1) Major debates about leaving religion; 2) Case studies and empirical insights; and 3) Theoretical and methodological approaches. Section one provides the reader with an introduction to key terms, historical developments, major controversies and significant cases. Section two includes case studies that illustrate various processes of leaving religion from different perspectives, and each chapter provides new empirical insights. Section three discusses, presents and encourages new approaches to the study of leaving religion.

This volume gathers together expertise from academics and practitioners in order to investigate the interconnections and interactions between religion, migration and the refugee regime.

Drawing on new research material from ten European countries, Asylum Determination in Europe: Ethnographic Perspectives brings together a range of detailed accounts of the legal and bureaucratic processes by which asylum claims are decided.The book includes a legal overview of European asylum determination procedures, followed by sections on the diverse actors involved, the means by which they communicate, and the ways in which they make life and death decisions on a daily basis. It offers a contextually rich account that moves beyond doctrinal law to uncover the gaps and variances between formal policy and legislation, and law as actually practiced. The contributors employ a variety of disciplinary perspectives - sociological, anthropological, geographical and linguistic - but are united in their use of an ethnographic methodological approach. Through this lens, the book captures the confusion, improvisation, inconsistency, complexity and emotional turmoil inherent to the process of claiming asylum in Europe.

Understanding religion from a material and corporeal angle, this open access book addresses the ways in which refugees practice their religions and convert or develop new faiths. It also evaluates how secular institutions in Europe frame and determine what is classified as religion according to the law, and delineate the limits of religious authority, religious practice, and religious speech. The question of nationalism and migration has been shaping the political landscape in Europe for more than a decade, resulting in a nationalist upsurge. This volume places the current trajectories of people from Asia and Africa who flee from conditions such as oppression and conflict, and who are seeking refuge in Europe in a broader historical and comparative perspective. In so doing, it addresses past experiences in Europe with the role of religion in both producing and accommodating refugees, in the aftermath of the Peace of Westphalia, World War II, and in the context of the Cold War.

In Christianity and Conversion among Migrants, Darren Carlson explores the faith, beliefs, and practices of migrants and refugees as well as the Christian organizations serving them between 2014–2018 in Athens, Greece.

Christianity has grown dramatically over the last few centuries and is now the largest religion in the world, embraced by more than 2.5 billion people from all over the globe. No longer just a European faith, Christianity is now border-less, with heartlands in Brazil, the Congo, and the Philippines. Christ and Culture: A Global Perspective introduces students to how Christianity has been adopted by some of the world's cultures in surprising and fascinating ways. Case studies include: Nairobi, Kenya Lake Tana, Ethiopia Bangalore, India Stockholm, Sweden Buenos Aires, Argentina Jerusalem, Israel Turin, Italy Los Angeles, USA Within these chapters, topics such as global Pentecostalism, Catholic–Protestant relations, Orthodoxy, reverse missions, secularization, and urbanization are discussed, with allusions to H. Richard Niebhur's classic text (1951) on the topic throughout. Using engaging case studies, this book will be essential reading for students introduced to Christianity, Christianity and culture, and global Christianity for the first time.

Social scientists sometimes seem not to know what to do with religion. In the first century of sociology's history as a discipline, the reigning concern was explaining the emergence of the modern world, and that brought with it an expectation that religion would simply fade from the scene as societies became diverse, complex, and enlightened. As the century approached its end, however, a variety of global phenomena remained dramatically unexplained by these theories. Among the leading contenders for explanatory power to emerge at this time were rational choice theories of religious behavior. Researchers who have spent time in the field observing religious groups and interviewing practitioners, however, have questioned the sufficiency of these market models. Studies abound that describe thriving religious phenomena that fit neither the old secularization paradigm nor the equations predicting vitality only among organizational entrepreneurs with strict orthodoxies. In this collection of previously unpublished essays, scholars who have been immersed in field research in a wide variety of settings draw on those observations from the field to begin to develop more helpful ways to study religion in modern lives. The authors examine how religion functions on the ground in a pluralistic society, how it is experienced by individuals, and how it is expressed in social institutions. Taken as a whole, these essays point to a new approach to the study of religion, one that emphasizes individual experience and social context over strict categorization and data collection.

This book offers an in-depth analysis of a fundamental human freedom and a cornerstone of democracy: the Freedom of Religions or Beliefs (FoRB). The book focuses on the legal protection and promotion of FoRB in Europe because, in this context, exercising this right goes beyond a mere internal positioning in terms of legislation; rather, it is influenced by international and supranational case law, as well as the promotional activities of selected non-state subjects of international law. The content is divided into three sections: Part I on the European Convention of Human Rights, Part II on the EU, and Part III on other international actors. The first two Parts examine FoRB in its systematic aspects and “day-to-day” aspects. In contrast, the third Part highlights the promotional activities carried out by the Holy See, the ILO, the Council of Europe (“beyond the Strasbourg Court”), and the OSCE to promote, recommend or otherwise support it. Overall, the volume highlights how the exercise of FoRB can be ensured via international and supranational legal protection (both normative and judicial) and via promotional activities aimed at encouraging and helping states guarantee tolerance and pluralism in their national legislation. The 16 main chapters offer a broad overview of the topic under investigation. Each contribution can be seen as a stand-alone study and, simultaneously, as a link in a chain of legal analysis that connects multiple FoRB-focused questions. The book offers a valuable tool for all readers with an academic or professional interest in FoRB and those who have to address the issue of how to protect this freedom. It is intended not only for academics who work in the field of law but also for legal practitioners (judges, lawyers, diplomats), human rights advocates, members of religious and spiritual communities, policymakers and students.