Free the Children as a new secular spiritual movement': a case study on the conceptual boundaries between spirituality', the sacred', and new religious movements'
The movement under study, Free the Children (FtC), is a youth empowerment organization that was founded in 1995 by a Canadian teenager, who, twenty years on, remains its leader today. Though it does not define itself as either a religion or an alternative to religion, it frequently uses the language...
| Published in: | Journal for the Study of Spirituality |
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| Authors: | ; |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
[2017]
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| In: |
Journal for the Study of Spirituality
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| Further subjects: | B
Spirituality
B New Religious Movements B new secular spiritual movement B youth social justice B the secular sacred B Free the Children |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) |
| Summary: | The movement under study, Free the Children (FtC), is a youth empowerment organization that was founded in 1995 by a Canadian teenager, who, twenty years on, remains its leader today. Though it does not define itself as either a religion or an alternative to religion, it frequently uses the language of spirituality'. Moreover, it meets all five criteria proposed by Lorne Dawson [2006. New Religious Movements. In The Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion, edited by Robert A. Segal, 269-284. Malden: Blackwell, 374] to define a new religious movement (NRM). It likewise demonstrates a valuation of certain principles (belonging, community, compassion, and caring) as set apart and inviolable: what Kim Knott [2013. The Secular Sacred: In-between or Both/And? In Social Identities between the Sacred and the Secular, edited by Abby Day, Giselle Vincett and Christopher R. Cotter, 145-160. Farnham: Ashgate] characterizes as the secular sacred'. Trying to situate FtC in the post-war seeking culture' in which so many NRMs and alternative spiritualities' arose [Clarke, Peter B. 2006. New Religions in Global Perspective: A Study of Religious Change in the Modern World. New York: Routledge] reveals a major conceptual problem: spirituality', the sacred', and NRMs' have been operationally defined in many pieces of religious studies literature in relation to religion' and other terms, but never systematically in relation to each other. This is what our project proposes to do, provisionally offering the term new secular spiritual movement' (NSSM) as a heuristic. |
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| ISSN: | 2044-0251 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal for the Study of Spirituality
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1080/20440243.2017.1370905 |