Introduction and Research Methods

Radical religion scholarship has not yet responded satisfactorily to the question of how and why individual members of radical religious groups become and stay strongly committed, why they remain members despite societal animosity, severed family and social ties, inward-facing violence, and emotional strain. Instead, the emphasis in research has been on push factors, such as marginalisation and radicalisation, on radical beliefs and the outward-facing performance of violence (Juergensmeyer 2020, 2013; Dawson 2018a, 2018b; Kühle 2018; Assmann 2016; Kaplan 2015; Aslan 2013; Sedgwick 2010), rather than on pull factors, persistence, and staying-in (Feldt 2023a). 

There is much to suggest that it is worthwhile to examine the breadth and depth of commitment in radical religion in a more fundamental way to understand its persistence. RADHEART asks: what is the role of emotions and embodiment in strong, individual religious commitment in the ancient world? We propose to analyse and theorise strong religious commitment in the ancient world in an innovative way by focusing on the emotions, embodied experience, and the self. The aim is to move research away from an overly belief-oriented and conceptual focus and towards taking the embodied self seriously. 

The idea is to investigate strong, religious commitment in ancient forms of Judaism and Christianity to track its historical emergence and how it evolved in the first religious traditions in which radical religious formations appeared. The aims are 1) to analyse the role of the emotions, embodied experience, and the self in emic models of strong religious commitment and 2) to devise a novel approach to strong commitment in religion that also can contribute to radical religion research in a broader perspective, 3) to theorise radical ancient religion in a new way in terms of radical habits of the heart. Instead of focusing on ancient conceptual reflections, terminology for religion, or on beliefs, the project will focus on habits of the heart (Bellah 1985), understood as emic models of the felt experience of religious commitment, involving the emotions and embodied self of the individual. 

Using a perspective that combines the aesthetics of religion (an approach that addresses the role of the body, the senses, and emotions in religion) and experience-oriented anthropology, RADHEART focuses on how emotionally intense, strong religious commitments (radical habits of the heart) are expressed and cultivated in Jewish and Christian formative traditions. The project analyses religious, ideal models of commitment (habits) that, in the ancient world, predominantly use the language of interior organs or body parts like hearts, kidneys, or the throat (habits of the heart). 

RADHEART works simultaneously on three axes: a) textuality – radical habits of the heart as expressed in ancient, written media, b) mediality – how media formats cultivate ancient audiences’ embodied experience poetically and narratively, 3) practice – their usage in religious social life. By working comparatively and by means of a wide scope and timeframe, RADHEART has the potential to transform research on RAR. It is time to move away from the focus on terminology, conceptual reflections, and perceptions about an all-encompassing collectivity in ancient religions as if they were made of cement and consistently the same all the way through, as if all individuals were equally religious all the time. Instead, RADHEART addresses expressions and models of strong, individual religious commitment. It is crucial to understand better the corporeal and experiential aspects of strong religious commitment in individuals if we are to understand the persistence of radical religion. Strong, religious commitment fundamentally shapes any form of radical religion, but it has not yet been studied historically and comparatively across the ancient world’s most influential traditions.

Purpose and Research Questions

The role of individual commitment in radical religion is arguably decisive for understanding the persistence of radical religion, and any longer-term survival of radical religious formations. One of the most significant traits of radical religion is a strong and enduring emotional commitment on the part of individuals. Religious media (including texts) express and cultivate strong commitment in different ways, from fulfilling meticulously every instruction, to being consumed by zeal, loving God in total devotion, or remaining calm in the face of torture and death. Yet the often extremely evocative models of an individual’s strong commitment, as we find them in ancient texts about martyrs, ascetics, strict law-abiders, or religious warriors, and especially the role that emotionality and embodiment play in them, have not received much research at all, and hardly any in the field of ancient religions (notwithstanding good studies of individual types). Radical religion in the ancient world has not been studied much comparatively and we still know much too little about the factors that cultivate individual commitment in radical religion. Now, contemporary experience-oriented anthropology has shown convincingly the decisive impact of emic religious models in the cultural kindling of religious actors’ experience and commitment (Luhrmann 2020; Luhrmann and Weisman et al. 2021; Luhrmann and Weisman 2022). 

Further, scholarship on ancient religions habitually relies on terminology-focused, conceptual approaches to ancient religion, fixating on reflections that were a prerogative of elites. Another consistent focus has been the collectivity of ancient religions and religion’s embedded nature, leading to implicit assumptions that ancient people were equally religious all the time and to a lack of focus on local actors (for criticism of these trends, Harkins 2023, 10; Rüpke 2021; for etic concepts: Petersen 2017). The fundamental significance of embodiment, emotions, and media effects have not been paid enough attention in RAR, nor have ancient models of commitment. The pervasive presence of innards and body parts in expressions of commitment have not been taken into account in theorising about RAR. The skewed over-emphasis on concepts, terms, and collectivity leaves crucial aspects inadequately understood, and we hardly know anything about the historical emergence and continually evolving forms of strong, religious commitment. Drawing on recent leaps forward in research on individualisation in ancient religions (Fuchs et al. 2020; Rüpke 2020) and on the embodied self (Najman 2021; Lasater 2021; Lilly 2021; Rosen-Zvi 2021), RADHEART zooms in on the strongly committed religious self in ancient Jewish and Christian traditions. 

Combining the above two areas of contribution – contemporary radical religion research and ancient religions research – my research questions are:

1. How can the study of strong individual commitment in terms of emotions and embodiment change our understanding of radical ancient religion?
2. How is individual strong religious commitment expressed in ancient forms of Judaism and Christianity in poetry and narrative? How do the expressions evolve over time until the end of Late Antiquity? How are emotions and the body’s organs and parts used to express an individual’s commitment?
3. How do ancient religious media cultivate strong commitment in their contexts of practice?