The Transmission of Spirituality in Broader Landscapes of Power

Abstract

When spirituality moves—from one religion to another, from religious to secular fields, or from private to public spheres—it can change in many ways, based on who is sending and who is receiving the practices, and the local and broader institutional contexts in which practitioners abide. Yet scholarship seldom interrogates how strongly different cultural and structural layers of social settings impact spiritual practitioners’ experiences, and the pluralistic forms of spirituality that result. To show how peer and institutional cultures can shape spirituality in their own likeness and to serve their own needs, I provide illustrative examples of how, in order to resonate with new audiences, spirituality changes. These examples reveal how deeply socially situated American spirituality is in broader social and institutional fields, in contrast to common perceptions among the public and scholars that describe spiritual practices as typically individualistic private means of transcending social life.

Selfish or Substituting Spirituality? Clarifying the Relationship between Spiritual Practice and Political Engagement

“…Instead, we argue that researchers can distinguish between spiritual and religious practices, but any researcher-imposed etic distinction is not universal (Steensland et al 2022). The terms "religious" and "secular" carry multiple meanings across different social contexts (Asad 1993;Blankholm 2014;Brown 2022;Chen 2022;Kucinskas 2019;Steensland et al 2022). Asad (1993:29) argues, "there cannot be a universal definition of religion .…”

“…Historical and comparative scholarship shows how clean analytic distinctions between religion and spirituality are difficult to maintain as etic concepts. The United States has a rich history of spiritual practices inspired by Christianity, transcendentalism, theosophy, interest in the occult, and popularized interpretations of Eastern traditions (Albanese 2007;Kucinskas 2019;Roof 1993;Taves and Kinsella 2014;Tweed 2000;Wilson 2014;Zinnbauer et al 1999). From this, one could argue that spirituality in the United States has some stable defining characteristics over time, including relationships with a "higher power" (Zinnbauer et al 1999), motivations for "self-transcendence and surrender" (Benner 1989:20), or existential quests for meaning (Ammerman 2013b;Bender 2010;Doyle 1992:302;Madsen 2009;Taves and Kinsella 2014;Zinnbauer et al 1999).…”

“…In places where the religious and the secular are not as clearly demarcated historically (e.g., China, parts of Africa, or the African diaspora), spiritual conceptions may be less defined and more diffuse (Adogame 2022;Sun 2022). Across these cases, religion, spirituality, and the secular serve as porous cultural boundary objects that signify what is appealing and revered and what is shunned in the particular historical, material, and social contexts in which they are located (Islam, Holm, and Karjalainen 2017;Kucinskas 2022;Pagis, Cadge, and Tal 2018;Steensland et al 2022).…”

“…Thus, we treat the distinction between religious, spiritual, and secular practices as an emic concept-as historically and socially situated symbolic boundaries that practitioners draw on to make sense of their experiences accessing something other than everyday reality (Abbott 1995;Lamont and Molnar 2002). This approach focuses more on how people use the terms spiritual and religious to implicitly distinguish their reports of personal experiences, socially situate themselves, and gain social and material benefits (Brown 2022;Gieryn 1999;Islam et al 2017;Kucinskas 2022).…”

“…Is spiritual practice selfish? That is, does it reinforce post-Enlightenment influences such as rationalization, individualism, and scientific and secular therapeutic cultures that infuse American spirituality (Bellah et al [1985] 2007; Kucinskas 2019;Lasch 1979;Rieff 1966;Wuthnow 1998) and might it undermine public life? Or, is spiritual practice a substitute for conventional religious practices that has similar associations with political activity as religious engagement?…”