If it looks like religion, smells like religion and tastes like religion, is it religion? : A study into why people bring their infant child to baptism when they do not attend Church.

Bunday, Richard and Dawson, Andrew (2020) If it looks like religion, smells like religion and tastes like religion, is it religion? : A study into why people bring their infant child to baptism when they do not attend Church. PhD thesis, Lancaster University.

Text (2020BundayPhD)
Ref_Bunday_PhD_Submitted_16.11.2020.pdf - Published Version
Restricted to Repository staff only until 18 November 2025.
Available under License None.
Download (2MB)

Abstract

This thesis draws upon empirical data from fifty semi-structured interviews, participant observation and living alongside the community of Kirkham, Lancashire to answer the question ‘Why do people bring their infant child to baptism when they do not attend Church?’ The study concluded that the participants brought their children to be baptised for ritualistic, personalised and often secular motifs that were subjectively constructed through a sense of memory, place and aesthetics. The research engages and illuminates lived religion in a northern market town through the lens of infant baptism. This thesis dismantles the assumption that people who bring their infant child to baptism do so for orthodox religious reasons. At the heart of this study lies an interaction between people whose lives are lived away from institutional religion yet seek a ritual provided by the very same institution. The Kirkham Project affirms the turn to the self, which both encompasses a personalised sense of autonomy and acknowledges the centrality of the relational. This research positions infant baptism, for those who do not attend Church, as an important rite of passage that is actively re-configured by the participants in this study. It challenges the concept of individualism and underscores the significance of a personalised and relational approach to meaningmaking.