Spirituality has increasingly featured in writings about religion. This article explores the diverse and often contradictory ways in which this term is now being employed, it questions the reasons for its present popularity, and asks to what extent it can serve the purposes to which it is being put. Finally, by using the insights of contemporary anthropology and especially the work of Michael Carrithers, it suggests a more satisfactory way in which the ideas associated with spirituality might be investigated.
1996 Academic Press Limited A distinguishing characteristic of contemporary religious studies is the extraordinary popularity of the idea of spirituality and the proliferation of its use in courses, conferences, discussions, journals and books. 1 What is also apparent is the widespread and radical differences that exist over the use of the term, its possible meanings and significance. For some it represents the move of phenomenological studies of religion into a new key, stressing subjectivities and experience as over against dispassionate objectivity, the soul rather than the form of religion. To others it signifies an escape from the unnecessary confines of religion into the more inclusive realm of our common humanity, rendering any necessary reference to the transcendent obsolete. To yet others its obscurities and ambiguities render it an empty and misleading slogan. And such different uses can be multiplied.
What do we mean by Spirituality?
Professor Flew gives a striking example of the contemporary use of the term. 2 The mother of a young woman who had died tragically in a demonstration over the export of veal calves to France said that her daughter was not religious, but spiritual. I can think of many other examples when a speaker has detached spirituality from religion. A student told me firmly that she was not interested in religion but in spirituality. Another said about paintings by Piet Mondrian and Wassily Kandinsky that they were spiritual, not religious. A third said that her own spirituality was about going for walks in the country and looking at the flowers.
Are these simply examples of a loose use of language? How are we to understand them? In the case of the young woman mentioned above, her mother may have meant that her daughter did not go to church but that she had chosen a life of moral responsibility that involved sensitivity to, or compassion for, all sentient beings. The student who said that for her spirituality meant walking in the country felt embarrassed at the apparent simplicity of this statement, but it struck a strong chord with her friends. Perhaps by spirituality she meant feelings of harmony, serenity and well-being. We may safely hypothesize that for both her and her friends spirituality is a wider and more accessible concept than religion, expressed not only through religion but experienced through art, music and nature.
More formally, spirituality has been variously described as an approach to God, a religious practice, a devotional path, a discipline, a creative energy, a sense of awe and mystery, a distinctive religious ethos or mode of experience, an inner moral orientation, the ethical transcendence of self, mystical awareness, the sense of the numinous, an appreciation of the mysteries and depths of human experience. Such diffuse generalities,