Negotiating the Popular,the Sacred and the Political

The engagement of young people of religious faith with global injustice has been little explored in studies either of youth religiosity or youth political participation. The recently established youth initiatives of Christian Aid and Tearfund—two of the UK’s most widely recognized Christian non-governmental organizations (NGOs)—offer a way to explore this, alongside the SPEAK Network, a grassroots Christian student and youth movement that campaigns on social justice issues. Analyzing the blog posts of these three initiatives, this article will focus particularly upon the ways in which Tearfund Rhythms, the Christian Aid Collective and SPEAK use popular culture, categorizing their various uses as either innovation, appropriation, resistance or reclamation. It will then explain the groups’ differing emphases by considering their varying relationships with their members and their different religious positioning, before critically assessing what it means for young adults to ‘do’ religion and politics online.