The Material Logics of Confirmation

Abstract

The paper explores the material spaces and logics of religious learning processes. A discrepancy between religious educators and the 14-year-old confirmands was evident during a 1 year of ethnographic fieldwork. A material semiotic approach provides important perspectives on the dynamics between material and human actors in religious learning context. The findings suggest that different notions of space with different logics of religious learning were established during the confirmation program. The spaces and logics were constituted by the interplay with material objects, pastors, catechists and confirmands. The paper points to how materiality is part of religious learning and how materiality can open up for different ways of practicing and conceptualize religion.