Religious Modernness as a Socio-Psychological Turn (Analysis of the Narrative of Lived Experience of Tehran University Students)

This paper aims to investigate students' interpretations of the emergence of religious modernness by referring to the pith of their daily religious life. Religious modernness has also been studied based on Lapland, Kanter and Rambo models. The method used in this research is narrative analysis. Among the students of the University of Tehran, a semi-structured narrative interview was conducted with 31 of them using the theoretical saturation technique. The interviews were finally summarized and analyzed thematically in individual narratives as well as a general narrative. The findings of this study show the occurrence of a complication of change in the religious life of students. Students' narratives of their religious lives contain basic points about the dimensions of religiosity, which show that all of them have been affected by individual and environmental changes and have finally rethought their religiosity. To illustrate this change, the interviews were divided into three time periods: "sustainable religious life", "crisis in religious life" and "religious modernness ", and the most important topics of each stage were extracted. Three fundamental themes were extracted from each of the three stages, including "religiosity as a priori", "crisis of religious identity" and "religiosity as a posteriori". Also, students' understanding and interpretation of religious modernity indicate a clear and decisive understanding. Finally, it should be said that the general narrative of students about their religious modernity indicates a posteriori understanding of religiosity. Among them, modernity is understood and interpreted as a socio-psychological turn that can be analyzed on the historical context of their religious life.