Lived religion

"[3] The concept of lived religion was popularized in the late 20th century by religious study scholars like Nancy T. Ammerman, David D. Hall, Meredith McGuire, and Robert A. Orsi.

Ammerman studies religion as it plays out in the everyday lives of ordinary people and the contexts they inhabit—homes, offices, healthcare facilities, as well as institutional religious settings.

Her approach, illustrated in Sacred Stories, Spiritual Tribes: Finding Religion in Everyday Life[6] and detailed methodologically in Studying Lived Religion: Contexts and Practices,[7] draws on the narrative and photographic reports of subjects' descriptions of their religious practices and resources in diverse fields of lived experience.

[9] Her work has been particularly important in highlighting the role of embodied experience in the practice of religion, drawing on Maurice Merleau-Ponty's concept of the "lived body" as the locus of human engagement with reality.

"[16] 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 his book, Orsi explores and explains various internal traditions, cultures, and power and social dynamics in order to illustrate the various religious meanings and significance for community in Italian Harlem.

"[18] Orsi is concerned with the limitations of popular religions because he sees it as potentially authorizing legitimacy and boundaries in religious practices and beliefs.

Hall’s book covers topics including gift exchange, cremation, hymn singing and many other essays on lived and practiced religious belief.

[23] Hall calls lived religion an "imperfect tool" noting that even with a dynamic study of laity it is impossible to fully understand any one person’s religious practices, especially when summarizing from a single location be it time or place.

Hall writes, "Popular religion has therefore come to signify the space that emerged between official or learned Christianity and the profane (or ‘pagan’) culture.