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This paper focuses on the triangulation of sexuality, religion and secularity in Dutch society by analysing two contemporary case studies. We focus on sexual experiences and practices rather than identities to further understand the constructions of what constitutes 'good' sex. The empirical research is situated in the Netherlands, where the binary of religion and sexual regulation versus secularity and sexual freedom has been dominant in both public and political discourse for a long time. Exploring sexual practices and narratives as central to the constitution of both religious and secular selves, we noted these to be fluctuating, inconsistent and subject to discourses. Our first case study discusses sexual experiences of non-heterosexual Protestant women, whereas the second explores the frequently considered 'neutral' notions of secularity in sexual education. Applying insights from both religious studies and queer studies, we bring the empirical study of sexuality together with the theoretical debates about the conceptualisation of the secular and the religious in contemporary Western Europe. This comparative approach to sexuality not only undermines the culturally presumed exclusive opposition of the secular and the religious but it also provides new empirical contributions for understanding the interactions between sexual practices and sexual discourses.

This article focuses on the triangulation of sexuality, religion and secularity in Dutch society by analysing two contemporary case studies. We focus on sexual experiences and practices rather than sexual identities to further understand the constructions of what constitutes 'good' sex. The empirical research is situated in the Netherlands, where the binary of religion and sexual regulation versus secularity and sexual freedom has been dominant in both public and political discourse for a long time. Exploring sexual practices and narratives as central to the constitution of both religious and secular selves, we noted these to be fluctuating, inconsistent and subject to discourses. Our first case study discusses sexual experiences of non-heterosexual Protestant women, whereas the second explores the frequently considered 'neutral' notions of secularity in sexual education. Applying insights from both religious studies and queer studies, we bring the empirical study of sexuality together with the theoretical debates about the conceptualisation of the secular and the religious in contemporary Western Europe. This comparative approach to sexuality not only undermines the culturally presumed exclusive opposition of the secular and the religious but it also provides new empirical contributions for understanding the interactions between sexual practices and sexual discourses.

Cover -- Half Title -- Series -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- List of contributors -- Acknowledgements -- Transforming bodies and religions: powers and agencies in Europe -- Introduction to governing bodies -- 1 The secular body in the Dutch field of sexual health -- 2 SRHR, the liberated body, and the primacy of conscience: probing beyond the secular/religious binary -- 3 The religious embodiments of Drag Sethlas: blasphemous popular art and the religious/secular divide before the Spanish court -- Introduction to narrating bodies -- 4 Negotiating transformation and difference: women's stories of conversion to Judaism and Islam -- 5 Embodying transformation: religious and gender transitions in Jewish autobiography -- 6 "The Richest Material for Moral Reflection": narrated bodies and narrative ethics -- 7 Exploring new vocabularies in conversations about religion, race, politics, and justice -- Introduction to negotiating bodies -- 8 (Re)Negotiating embodiment when moving out of Islam: an empirical inquiry into 'A Secular Body' -- 9 Vacillating in and out of whiteness: non­religiosity and racial (dis)identification among the Iranian­Dutch -- 10 Women wearing the tallit: tracing gender, belonging, and conversion of new Jewish women -- Afterword: corporate, corporal, collective: reflections on bodies, genres, and the ongoing troubling of the categories of religion and the secular -- Index.

"This book sheds an interdisciplinary light on 'transforming bodies': bodies that have been subjected to, contributed to, or have resisted social transformations within religious or secular contexts in contemporary Europe. It explores the intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and religion that underpin embodied transformations. Using post-secularist, postcolonial and gender/queer perspectives, it aims to gain a better understanding of the orchestrations and effects of larger social transitions related to religion. This volume is the outcome of the intensive collaboration of the authors, who for years have been meeting regularly in Utrecht, the Netherlands, to discuss themes related to religion and 'the challenge of difference', with an added afterword by Prof. Pamela Klassen from the University of Toronto. The book is divided in three subsections that focus on particular types of embodiment: body politics in governmental and NGO organisations; the role of the body in literary and/or autobiographical narratives; and ethnographic case studies of bodies in daily life. Doing so, it provides an innovative exploration of contemporary religion and the body. It will, therefore, be of great interest to scholars of Religious Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Post-Colonial Studies, Anthropology, Sociology, Theology, and Philosophy"--