The Social Ethic of Religiously Unaffiliated Spirituality
Today a growing percentage of Westerners are engaged in highly subjective, non-religiously affiliated forms of spiritual seeking. Since its early beginnings in the 1970s, New Age movement, non-institutionally mediated forms of spirituality, moved well beyond a restricted esoteric framework into the...
| Published in: | Religion compass |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Wiley-Blackwell
2008
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| In: |
Religion compass
Year: 2008, Volume: 2, Issue: 2, Pages: 240-256 |
| Online Access: |
Presumably Free Access Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Today a growing percentage of Westerners are engaged in highly subjective, non-religiously affiliated forms of spiritual seeking. Since its early beginnings in the 1970s, New Age movement, non-institutionally mediated forms of spirituality, moved well beyond a restricted esoteric framework into the cultural mainstream. Here, they are more broadly supported and intensified by a robust cultural ethic of individualism and religious antiauthoritarianism. Despite clear indications that this type of spirituality is a religious adaptation or innovation to the ineluctable force of late modernity, many scholars and cultural observers continue to represent it as a weak, socially insignificant form of religious expression that is contributing to a crisis of civic engagement and community mindedness through its over-emphasis on the self and its experiences. Claims that non-institutional, non-dogmatic forms of religiosity promote narcissism and social alienation are scattered throughout the social scientific literature. Yet, little empirical data support these contentions. Building on studies that demonstrate a positive correlation between individualism and civic engagement, this article suggests that future research may well discover that religiously unaffiliated spirituality is in fact a socially engaged religious expression. |
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| ISSN: | 1749-8171 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Religion compass
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-8171.2007.00059.x |