"Collecting Catholicity : The Materialization of Faith within the Taiwanese Domestic Sphere" / Chambon, Michel

Published in the International Journal of Asian Christianity: Vol. 8 (2025): Iss. 2 :
Special Issue: Asian Catholic Materials and Space

Abstract:
This article explores how contemporary Taiwanese Catholics materialize their faith within their homes. Based on ethnographic material collected from Catholic households in Northern Taiwan, it presents the diversity of religious items found in the homes of churchgoers, the organizational patterns of these artifacts, and the invisible relationships behind them. Moving beyond discussions of inculturation as a process of integration and of material religion as a question of semiotic ideologies, this article argues that Catholic items found in the privacy of Taiwanese homes allow their owners to deploy an array of multidimensional relationships, a form of Catholicity that cannot easily be reduced to a single issue. From the intimacy of home, Catholic items enable churchgoers to position themselves at the heart of a rich, personalized, and evolving network of glocal Catholicism, a material and domestic form of Catholicity which complements the institutional Church.