Stealing My Religion

Liz Bucar’s Stealing my Religion: Not Just any Cultural Appropriation takes readers through the messy ethical terrain of religious appropriation, particularly as a complex and sensitive form of cultural appropriation. The need to use exact language around what religion (or doing religion) is and the ethical implications of religious borrowing are under microscopic analysis in Bucar’s new book (28-29). To this end, the book follows three generative case studies involving individuals who borrow or participate in, but are not affiliated with, religious communities. These examples include religious attire (hijab), religious pilgrimage (walking the Camino), and religious meditation for respite (yoga). The case studies engage various literatures, including those dedicated to the “spiritual but not religious” movement, popular spirituality, popular culture, and ritual studies, and overlap with religious traditions such as Islam, Christianity, and Hinduism.

Bucar’s first case study, which focuses on the use of the “solidarity hijab” (particularly as employed by white liberal women), highlights the limitations of these efforts, which are often little more than a superficial form of performative allyship. These boundaries are especially evident when “wear the hijab for a day” in support of Muslim women does not result in naming and challenging the ongoing violence against Black and racialized Muslim women’s and queer bodies. Rather, such support of the hijab (such as on social media), (re) claims space for non-Muslims instead of centering the voices and stories of Muslim women who the cause supposedly supports. The latter is even more dangerous in a postcolonial era of continued gendered Islamophobia and anti-Muslim violence.

The second case study that Bucar explores involves the popular Catholic pilgrimage of Santiago de Compostela (“the Way to St. James”) in Spain. This chapter was pleasantly surprising (in the best of ways), as it did not seem like an obvious example to include in this study, but it ended up being unexpectedly absorbing. The strength of this chapter is the autoethnographic nature of the discussion, particularly from a pedagogical vantage point. Bucar draws on her own experience of leading undergraduate students on Camino study abroad trips over the years. In doing so, she unpacks her own complicity in promoting and adding to the popularization and appropriation of a religious ritual by her mostly non-Catholic students for a university experiential learning program. The voices of her students offer incisive insights into this practice while also inviting questions about the motive behind such courses, which are pushed by neo-liberal postsecondary institutions and ultimately aim to sell authentic cultural experiences in faraway places to students who have capital to access them.

The final case study on yoga was particularly well done. Bucar again draws on her own experience, in this case of completing a yoga training program at the Kripalu Center just before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Here the focus is on the role of yoga as a therapeutic practice in the Global North and the ethical challenges associated with the practice. This chapter feels even more pertinent, since, as Bucar notes, meditation apps were downloaded at a drastic rate during the early stages of the pandemic, when anxiety and uncertainty swept throughout the world. The issue is complicated because, on the one hand, there is an increased need for mental health support (due to systemic issues across the broad), and this may require individualized responses that use techniques like yoga or meditation. However, this path cannot be pursued without confronting difficult questions about the appropriation of ancient religious practices. We must grapple, in other words, with the perennial question of who owns yoga, which is further complicated by the fact that it is unclear if North American yoga is even the same as yoga practiced historically in South Asian contexts. These discussions draw from important work by scholars such as Andrea Jain and Shreena Gandhi.

Issues of capitalism, commodification, and consumption, combined with whitewashing, racism, and systemic power imbalances, weave the case studies together, which then expose the fraught ethical terrain of religious borrowing. The book should be applauded for its accessibility. It can easily be used in parts or as a whole in undergraduate courses, but more importantly, it is legible to general readers, perhaps particularly to the many people who participate in the various modes of religious appropriations that Bucar engages. What is even more valuable about the book is that the author consistently returns to her own position, as a liberal white woman and a religious studies scholar, and her relationship to the various examples of religious appropriation that she walks us through. Whether discussing the solidarity hijab or yoga, Bucar forces herself to wade into the ethical dilemmas of religious appropriation, assessing her own missteps as she attempts to chart a conscientious path forward.

It is for this reason that the conclusion of this book should also be noted for its incisiveness, as it invites the same reflection from each reader; that is, knowing what we know about asymmetrical power imbalances and the ways that capitalism breeds and feeds religious appropriation, how do we move forward with this knowledge? One possibility offered here is to borrow more! Though initially a stark statement to process, perhaps the call here is to borrow more conscientiously, invest equitably, and learn more deeply. It is hard to know how this would land for many individuals and communities who select practices loosely, not knowing that they are even religious in nature. Regardless, there will not be a consensus about these religious appropriations, and that is precisely why we must keep returning to these ethical crossroads.

In short, Stealing my Religion not only deftly grapples with fascinating case studies to name and center the ethical challenges of religious appropriation, but also models how to use this knowledge to reassess our relationship to practices of religious appropriation that we all collude with in various ways. The book also invites us to pause to (re)assess our participation in these complicated spheres of praxis—as educators and scholars, or just everyday folks—and ultimately our responsibilities to the communities we have harmed along the way.

Shobhana Xavier is an assistant professor of religion and diaspora at Queen’s University (Kingston, Canada).

M. Shobhana Xavier

Date Of Review:

March 21, 2023