Modern angels
Terhi Utriainen
University of Helsinki, Study of Religions
PCCC Åbo Akademi University (2010-2015)
Project, approach, materials
• Why to study modern angel religion in PCCR?
• Examples (cases) of something that happens in the present religious field
• Female dominated everyday religion?
• How to study angel religion?
• Ethnographic approach: interviews, observations in a variety of angel-related
events, questionnaire & other documents
Data
• 1) interviews with contemporary Finnish people (mostly women) who
communicate with angels in different ways
• 2) participatory observation during an angel-therapy training course &
other events (such as “angel-evenings”)
• 3) questionnaire distributed at the promotion visit by the Irish writer and
angel-seer Lorna Byrne in Helsinki (N263; 94 % women)
• 4) literature and cultural artifacts; media-material…
How many Finns believe in angels?
• Believes seriously 21,2 %
• Considers probable 24.9 %
• In the U.S. 60 %
• Angels traditional Christian figures
+
• Interest in angels is growing in Western countries
• Google: angel:
• God
• Jesus
1.290.000.000
1.650.000.000
955.000.000
Modern angel belief
(angel practice / interest in angels):
• Syncretistic: Lutheran - - - Esoteric (varies from person to person)
• Lived religion, vernacular religion
• Contemporary folk religion
• Research in U.S., U.K., Norway, Estonia, Hungary
examples...
• Drape, Scott and Joseph Barker, 2010. Angelic Belief as American Folk Religion. Sociological Forum 26: 623–643.
• Gardella, Peter, 2007. American Angels: Useful Spirits in the Material World. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.
• Gilhus, Ingvild Sælid, 2012. Angels in Norway: Religious border-crossers and border-markers. In: Marion Bowman and Ülo Valk
(eds.), Vernacular Religion in Everyday Life: Expressions of Belief . Sheffield: Equinox, 230–245.
• Kish-Halas, Judith 2012: “’I make my Saints Work…’: A Hungarian Holy Healer’s Identity Reflected in Autobiographical Sotires and
Folk Narratives. “In: Marion Bowman and Ülo Valk (eds.), Vernacular Religion in Everyday Life: Expressions of Belief . Sheffield:
Equinox, 61-92.
• Uibu, Marko, 2013. Creating Meanings and Supportive Networks on the Spiritual Internet Forum “The Nest of Angels”. Journal of
Ethnology and Folkloristics 6: 69–86.
• Utriainen, Terhi, 2013a. Doing Things with Angels: Agency, Alterity and Practices of Enchantment. In: Steven J. Suttcliffe and Ingvild
Sælid Gilhus (eds), New age spirituality: Rethinking religion. Durham: Acumen publishing, 242–255.
• Utriainen, Terhi, 2013b. Uskontotaidetta ja enkelinsiipiä: kaksi tapausta suomalaisissa naistenlehdissä. Media & Viestintä 2: 40–52.
• Utriainen, Terhi, 2014a. Angels, Agency and Emotions: Global Religion for Women in Finland? In: Terhi Utriainen and Päivi
Salmesvuori (eds.), Finnish women making religion: Between ancestors and angels. Palgrave McMillan, 237–254.
• Walter, Tony. “The Dead who Become Angels: Bereavement and Vernacular Religion.” Omega: Journal of Death and Dying.
(Forthcoming.)
What do you seek and find in this kind of event?
• Henkistä kasvua ja kehitystä, eväitä elämään, suunnan tai tarkoituksen löytämistä, ohjausta ja
opastusta (elämässä, henkiselle tielle), itsen ja omien tunteiden tuntemusta, valoa, voimaa,
uskon vahvistusta, uskoa ja luottamusta (hyvään, siihen että elämä kantaa, tulevaisuuteen), apua,
hoitoa, helpotusta tai parannusta (kipuun, fyysisiin ja psyykkisiin vaivoihin, elämän vaivoihin ja
tilanteisiin, ongelmien ratkaisemiseen, asioiden ymmärtämiseen, arjen ongelmiin, stressiin,
ahdistukseen, masennukseen, kriiseihin, hätätilanteisiin, onnettomiin sattumuksiin, suruun, ”olen
ollut rikki”), tukea ja vahvistusta (vaikeissa elämäntilanteissa ja epäselvien asioiden
ratkaisemisessa, omille ratkaisuille, oikean tien valinnalle), neuvoja, ohjeita, terveyttä,
hyvinvointia ja hyvää oloa, parempaa oloa, hyvää mieltä, ihanaa oloa, mahtavaa oloa, selvyyttä
ajatuksiin ja elämään (ja siihen että kuljen oikeaa tietä), (mielen)rauhaa, tasapainoa, lohtua,
tietoa ja ymmärrystä (ihmiskunnan vaiheista, ihmisestä, sielusta, näkymättömästä
todellisuudesta, Jumalasta, itsestä ja muista, menneestä ja tulevasta), rakkautta, lämpöä, lohtua,
yhteisöllisyyttä, toivoa, iloa, onnellisuutta, uteliaisuutta, näkemystä, inspiraatiota, kokemuksia,
sielulle ravintoa, sisältöä elämään, stressin hallintaa, hetken helpotusta, rohkeutta, turvaa,
vastauksia, mielenkiintoisia näkemyksiä, rentoutumista, piristystä, tyydytystä uteliaisuudelle,
jaksamisen keinoja, energiaa, varmuutta, vahvuutta, muutosta, oppia, ykseyden kokemusta,
vapauttavaa oloa, yhteyttä henkimaailmaan, Jumalaan, omaan sisimpään, selvänäköisyyttä,
etukäteistietoa, ”en mitään”…
Interviews:
• “Four or three.. years ago I suffered from severe depression and was taken
to hospital. It was in fact very soon after that that I painted these angels.”
• “Very, very big challenges, yes, yes. [T: Yes.] So that (…) without the help of
angels I wouldn’t ever have been able to bear it. But they gave me some
extra strength so that [T: Mm.] in a way I felt that I always went from one
stage to another”
• “I do everything with them. It is not like I wouldn’t have angels and God
present: they are her all the time.”
Angel rituals
• Meditations
• Visitations
• Magic, talismans
• Oracle cards
• Photographing (orbs)
• Healing
What do people receive from angels?
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Support in the everyday: coping, help with making choices
Healing moments, wellbeing
Spiritual growth, inspirations
Joy
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Angels as divine energy & companions
→ power, sense of agency
”not alone”
Bridges the ideal of individual choice with the idea of guidance; one’s own destiny
• Everyday support + enchantment (extraordinary)
The gender issue
• Over 90% women: white Finns, mostly 40+, many professional backgrounds
• C.f. Appr. 80 % women in alternative/holistic spirituality (Trzebiatowska & Bruce 2012)
• Most of them church members but ”struggle with it”
• c.f. in the U.S. lower social classes and minorities
• Also big international names are women
• Doreen Virtue, Diane Cooper, Maria Zavoe, Märta Luise, Lorna Byrne
• Emphasis of relational issues, emotions & emotion work
• culturally traditionally female responsibilities?
• Religion of care-givers? (c.f. traditional guardian angel figure)
• Angel aesthetic?
• Interesting material aspect: Commerciality? Habitus? Interpellation?
After vicarious religion?
• Not consegrated but insignated angels (still: tradition matters)
• Material and multi-sensorial (more than words)
• Learning small rituals
• Not simply individualistic!
• Both serious and playful
• ”Coping religion” (Stringer 2008) & enchantment
• Sensitivity to context (angels sometimes ”real”, other times metaphors)
• Capital for navitating in the complex contexts of a (post)secular world?
Angel visitation
Tradition?
Annunciation of Mary
Woman receiver of the experience
Tradition as recervoir or allowance
Creative imagination
Need to look at transforming Christianities?
• Biallecki, Haynes & Robbins (2008): transforming and pluralizing
Christianities
• Interfaces both with secular cultures and other religions
• Complex links with economic and demographic changes, plurality,
popular culture, etc.
What did we talk about when we discussed
angels?
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Christian / Lutheran theology & tradition
Official, institutional religion (and some of its problems)
Social structures and processes in the secular society; changes (instability)
Income and insecurity
Everyday life & individual responsibility
Health and well-being issues
Knowledge and imagination
Relation to Lutheranism in Finland?
• New-agization of Christianity / Christianization of New-Age?
• Alternative?
• Complementary?
• Complementary and alternative religion? (CAR?; c.f. CAM)