Between 11^th and 14^th March 2019, the team of the ‘Religion and Minority’ project met for the first explorative workshop at the University of Manchester. As part of the workshop, we conducted collaborative fieldwork among four different religious communities in Manchester and London. Members of the research group visited and interviewed representatives of Buddhist, Christian and Muslim communities to discuss with them questions relating to being and embracing ‘minorities’ and marginalised groups into their sets of religious narratives, values and practices. During the Manchester leg of fieldwork, we visited the Fo Guang Shan Buddhist temple in Old Trafford who belong to an international Chinese Buddhist monastic order based in Taiwan and St James and Emmanuel C o E Church in Didsbury who adopted an ‘Inclusive Church’ status in 2015. In London, we met with the members of Hidayah – a grass-root-driven support network run by and for LGBTQI+ Muslims, and the head priest of a Jōdo Shinshū community cantered around the Japanese Shin Buddhist centre – Three Wheels – located in west London. Their stories revealed a complicated picture of how people relate to (if at all) to the concept of ‘minority’ identities and how ‘minority’ can be framed through the notions of transnational identities, ethnicity, language, class, gender and sexuality. Amidst the complex intersection of various forms of marginalities, religiosity seemed to play different roles in negotiating spheres of inclusion and exclusion. Religion also appeared to both consolidate and challenge people’s individual and collective sense of identity.

The visit at the Fo Guang Shan and Three Wheels Buddhist temples brought our attention to the experiences of religious minorities in the UK, and the question of transnational religion more broadly. In both cases, the boundaries between religion, ethnicity and culture seemed to be blurred, as religious institutions became a site for broader cultural practices and the cultivation of national bonds. Both institutions envisioned to serve their practitioners not only as a religious centre but also as a vehicle to maintain or revitalise a connection with their ethnic, linguistic and cultural background. Strikingly, however, in the case of Fo Guang Shan temple, the nuns managing the temple felt that the strong link between religion and ethnicity was also a point of contention, especially among the second generation of their followers who associated more strongly with being British rather than the distant Chinese identity of their parents. The connection between religion and culture, however, extended beyond ethnic boundaries. The two religious sites became a point of contact for British people interested in Chinese or Japanese Buddhism and in the wider cultural context that shaped them. Contrary to Fo Guang Shan, most attendees at the Three Wheel temple events are reported to be non-Japanese who are interested in developing their knowledge of Buddhist teachings and practice. The head priest emphasised the significance of translating Shin Buddhist doctrine and rituals in a way that makes them meaningful and accessible to the community of Japanese and non-Japanese practitioners alike. The promotion of religious, cultural and social activities targeted at the surrounding community could be seen as a form of inclusion in itself, but also as means through which religious minority groups negotiate their position within host societies. Such efforts, most notably at the Fo Guang Shan temple, met also with challenges. Language gaps and different approaches to doctrine and religious practice across cultures emerged as potential obstacles to nurture an environment of inclusion. The Shin Buddhist temple, however, adopted a more flexible approach to ritual and doctrine to facilitate cross-cultural interactions. Both approaches highlighted limitations and opportunities as to how much religious minorities and transnational religions can adapt to different socio-cultural contexts without undermining their religious authority and claims of authenticity.

In turn, the cases of Hidayah and St James and Emmanuel church shed a light on negotiating minority identities relating to gender and sexuality within Islamic and Christian traditions. The accounts of representatives and members of both communities articulated the tensions emerging between the narratives and practices relating to gender, sexuality and faith (particularly in conversation with the scriptures), together with individual and institutional struggles to reconcile them. Participants’ testimonies revealed how the pursuit of inclusivity was often interwoven with personal and collective experiences of crisis and mediation between conflicting identities. Both encounters brought to the fore the question over how (if at all) religious organisations or traditions can become inclusive and develop conceptual and physical space to cater for the religious needs of minorities. It may not only require providing a safe space for practice and a support network for people experiencing a condition of marginality, but also a process of theological discussion and reinterpretation of scriptures. In both cases, members grappled with the doctrinal notions of sin and religiously prescriptive gender roles. Conversations of inclusivity in these areas are bound to raise criticism for questioning the scriptures. The path toward more inclusive religious teachings and practice, thus, is not without challenges. At times, as in the case of the inclusive church in Didsbury, it can paradoxically lead to excluding other – often more conservative – groups within the congregation. These considerations challenge the religious traditions’ and communities’ capacity to embrace change and difference, and the religious institutional malleability.

Those few days of fieldwork offered a glimpse into the complex intertwining of various forms of marginality, and the ways in which they can reinforce or counter each other. Our first attempt at collaborative fieldwork was a great start to the project’s aim to investigate ‘marginality’ and the concept of ‘minority’ in religious contexts, both from the point of view of how minority groups are constructed and defined in different cultural and social contexts, and in terms of how marginalised groups use religion to articulate their identity vis-à-vis the larger society and to negotiate their place within religious traditions. In the intersection of marginalised identities, religion plays an ambiguous role, becoming a potential source of tension but also a means to partially overcome one’s condition of minority.

Aura di Febo (The University of Manchester) and Paulina Kolata (The University of Manchester)

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