Is the spiritual not religious? Some caveats concerning religious diversity

Abstract

Religious diversity occupies a special place in our understanding of religion. Fundamentally, the related literature shows that today many individuals especially young people are both spiritual and religious, may or may not believe in God, and mostly self-identify as ‘not-religious’. This empirical reality thus de-emphasises the use of binaries (e.g. the religious and spiritual, this-worldly and otherworldly) for understanding the contemporary religious scene. However, this area of research is not without shortcomings. In fact, the empirical reality about religious diversity is partly based on a definition of religion and spirituality which is not specified in the related research. This article mainly focuses on this issue and shows how it can reinforce the unhelpful notion of the opposition between or the binary of religion and the secular and therefore downgrade an important theme in the literature which examines the religiosity of the secular.