The Social Ethic of Religiously Unaffiliated Spirituality

Abstract

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.

New Spirituality and Social Engagement

“…Religious cosmopolitanism may be reflected in the fact that people involved in new spirituality show a relatively high commitment to nature and the environment (Becker, De Hart, and Mens, 1997;Bernts, Dekker, and De Hart, 2007;Chandler, 2011), showing a concern with humanity in general and future generations. Some suggest that people involved in new spirituality show solidarity with others in more individual and informal ways related to their own biographical situations (e.g., De Hart, 2007;Chandler, 2011) and highly selective buying and boycotting behavior based on their personal ethics (Chandler, 2011).…”

“…Some suggest that people involved in new spirituality show solidarity with others in more individual and informal ways related to their own biographical situations (e.g., De Hart, 2007;Chandler, 2011) and highly selective buying and boycotting behavior based on their personal ethics (Chandler, 2011). But comparative empirical evidence supporting these suggestions is lacking.…”

“…In addition, we found a number of publications in which the criticism is referred to by authors who do not support it themselves (York, 1995;Wuthnow, 1998;Hedges and Beckford, 2000;Fuller, 2001;Marler and Hadaway, 2002;Dillon, Wink, and Fay, 2003;Possamai, 2005;Wink, Dillon, and Fay, 2005;Heelas, 2006Saroglou, 2006;Campbell, 2007;Chandler, 2008Chandler, , 2010Chandler, , 2011Oh and Sarkisian, 2012). We will focus on scholarly sources.…”

“…They refer to people who call themselves spiritual and/or religious, but who are not affiliated to a religious or spiritual organization. If this indication is used as a criterion for selecting respondents in an empirical study, and if the selection is not taken from a representative sample of the population, or if further selection criteria are used (Hay and Hunt, 2000;Chandler, 2011), prudence is called for when the results of such studies are compared. Chandler (2011) specifies her target group as 'spiritual but definitely not religious', eliminating every possible residual affinity with organized religion by further questions.…”

“…A number of sources do not specify such a comparison (Bloch, 1988;Hanegraaff, 1998;Hay and Hunt, 2000;Wuthnow, 2006). In other cases, explicit or implicit comparisons are made with people belonging to a religious community, who would have a higher social ethic (Hay and Hunt, 2000;Carrette and King, 2004;Dekker, 2004;Chandler, 2011). Most advocates of what we shall call the 'low social engagement'-hypothesis provide no quantitative comparative material (Heelas, 1996;Bloch, 1998;Hay and Hunt, 2000;Bruce, 2002;Van Harskamp, 2003).…”