1 Pedagogies of piety: Comparing young observant Muslims and Christians in the Netherlands Daan Beekers * Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Faculty of Social Sciences, VU University, De Boelelaan 1081, 1081 HV Amsterdam, the Netherlands In this article I compare the active religious engagement found among many of today’s young Dutch Muslims and Christians. I show that such comparison requires a move beyond the separate frameworks through which these groups are commonly perceived, found both in widely shared public discourses (‘allochthons’ versus ‘autochthons’) and in academic research (minority studies versus the sociology of religion). In their stead, this comparative analysis examines in what ways both groups give shape to observant religious practice in the shared context of contemporary Dutch society. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, I show that young Christians as well as Muslims participate in social settings of religious pedagogy, where they are encouraged to attain, sustain and improve personal piety in today’s pluralist Dutch society. Such social participation does not preclude, but rather comes together with a strong emphasis on reflexivity and authenticity. Keywords: Muslims, Christians, comparison, piety, pedagogy, pluralism, the Netherlands It is striking that considerable groups of young Dutch people are enthusiastically embracing religion in a society that is largely understood to be overwhelmingly secular. 1 This religious engagement is especially visible among groups of young Christians and Muslims who explicitly express their religiosity in youth organizations, religious * E-mail: d.t.beekers@vu.nl This is the pre-copyedited version of an article published in Culture and Religion: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2014, 15(1):72-99 [copyright Taylor & Francis]; URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14755610.2014.884009