Missing the Forest for the Trees: "Spiritual" Religion in a Secular Age
The rising popularity of the "spiritual but not religious" moniker across Canada and the West more generally has confounded scholars and laypersons alike. Against those who view the discursive shift from "religion" to "spirituality" in the twenty-first century as eviden...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
School
[2018]
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| In: |
Toronto journal of theology
Year: 2018, Volume: 34, Issue: 2, Pages: 243-256 |
| RelBib Classification: | AD Sociology of religion; religious policy AG Religious life; material religion KBQ North America |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Resolving-System) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | The rising popularity of the "spiritual but not religious" moniker across Canada and the West more generally has confounded scholars and laypersons alike. Against those who view the discursive shift from "religion" to "spirituality" in the twenty-first century as evidence of the incoherence of the contemporary spiritual landscape, I argue that, despite its apparent diversity, much of what goes by "spirituality" among this cohort exhibits striking uniformity in its basic structure. The implicit argument, then, is that observers who decry the fuzziness and indeterminacy of spirituality have focused too much on superficial differences at the expense of underlying similarities. In short, they have missed the forest for the trees. I begin by placing the rise of the spiritual but not religious in historical context. In this task, I follow philosopher Charles Taylor, whose insights into the massive subjective turn of modern culture have rarely been surpassed. I then outline the basic characteristics of the spiritual framework underlying the shift from religion to spirituality-what I call "self-spirituality." Drawing from my qualitative research with Canadian millennials, I seek to locate self-spirituality within the current social and political landscape. Finally, in locating self-spirituality within a particular religious tradition, I turn to the social thought of Ernst Troeltsch, whose perceptive observations, made at the outset of the twentieth century, remain invaluable for making sense of recent religious developments. As we shall see, in light of Troeltsch's insights, the rise of the spiritual but not religious looks quite different from what many have imagined. |
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| ISSN: | 1918-6371 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Toronto journal of theology
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.3138/tjt.2018-0112 |