In the Netherlands, traditional churches and religious institutions are losing ground, as is the case in the rest of western Europe. Religion changes and traditional religious forms migrate to other realms, sometimes to return to ecclesial contexts again. In this article, we present a research project on ritual-musical appropriations of psalms in contemporary Dutch culture. The concept of ritual-musical appropriations implies this is a social, and sometimes collective, process of meaning-making, which raises questions relating to formations of community, identity, and the power relations which structure and are structured by this very process.

This article discusses the appropriation of psalms in contemporary Dutch and Flemish culture through their performances in ‘extra-ecclesial’ settings and the ways in which aesthetics and embodied experiences play a role in this appropriation. Drawing on postsecular theory, we describe how both religious and secular dimensions are manifest in the performance of psalms on the level of aesthetics. Our contribution is a detailed analysis of empirical research data regarding different sensory perceptions (bodily, auditory, visual, synaesthetic), which we have studied both in isolation and interrelation. We show that religious and secular dimensions become intertwined in the temporally and spatially organized stimulation of different senses. A balancing act takes place between synaesthetic immersion in a collective ritual, and a more distanced, unisensory involvement to maintain individual authenticity. In this balance, an immersive ritual experience can become fertile soil for interaction with the transcendent. We argue that a postsecular stance should entail the interrogation and contextualization of immanent/transcendent dichotomies.

No abstract

This article discusses the role of biographical memory in three contemporary ritual-musical appropriations of the psalms in Dutch and Flemish contexts. We observe that, in performances of psalms, participants (intend to) either forget or recall different biographical memories. Nostalgic narratives of religious, cultural and individual change and continuity inform both the way that they interpret their experiences of these psalm performances, and their motivations for attempting to forget or recall particular memories related to the psalms. By using the notion of sacrality — that which is set apart, non-ordinary — we show that particular non-negotiable desires and non-ordinary experiences recur multiple times in these nostalgic narratives. Analysis of these desires and experiences leads us to conclude that contemplative experiences are desired by many, but experienced by only a few. We suggest the combination of Aleida Assmann’s theory of forgetting and remembering with the notions of nostalgia and sacrality as a way to successfully overcome the unproductive dichotomy between religious and cultural heritage.