Free the Children as a ‘new secular spiritual movement’: a case study on the conceptual boundaries between ‘spirituality’, ‘the sacred’, and ‘new religious movements’

“A Cult of Cookie Bakers”: The Spiritual Qualities of Youth Social Justice Organization Free the Children

“…The youth social justice initiative Free the Children/ME to WE offers much more than lessons on global injustices and charitable enterprise; indeed, it succeeds to the extent that it provides a sense of spirituality in line with the discursive sense of that term among Western millennials. We previously coined the term New Secular Spiritual Movement to describe FtC (Mosurinjohn and Funnell-Kononuk, 2017) and the analysis of member participation we have done here shows how it bears out in the various experiences that make up the movement. Through rituals ranging from the theatrical to the quotidian, ME-to-WE-ers move from a moment of awareness/awakening into a spiritual quest that fosters interconnection/belonging, ecumenism, and a way of living that includes charitable involvement, caring, equanimity, and sharing values.…”

“…In our 2017 article “Free the Children as a ‘new secular spiritual movement’: A case study on the conceptual boundaries between ‘spirituality,’ ‘the sacred,’ and ‘new religious movements,’” we suggested that Free the Children is best described as a “new secular spiritual movement” (Mosurinjohn and Funnell-Kononuk, 2017). Free the Children (hereafter referred to as FtC) 1 is the largest youth empowerment initiative in Canada.…”

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This article analyzes the growing youth social justice initiative Free the Children/ME to WE as a kind of "spiritual movement" by demonstrating how the discourses utilized by participants and authorities resemble both the discourse of selfspirituality, as found among actual millennials, and the discourse of youth spirituality found in the developmental sciences literature. Building on previous research in which we characterized this family of organizations as a "new secular spiritual movement," (Mosurinjohn and Funnell-Kononuk, 2017). we situate the phenomenological experience of its distinctive "WE spirituality" in the landscape of contemporary Western spirituality.

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