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Goodbye Jesus

Definitions of Spirituality


Orbit

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I was reading an article in the Journal for the Scientific Study of religion with the abstract below, which I thought might be a good starting point for a discussion of what different people mean when they say "Spirituality":

 

“Spirituality” often has been framed in social science research as an alternative to organized “religion,” implicitly or explicitly extending theoretical arguments about the privatization of religion. This article uses in‐depth qualitative data from a religiously diverse U.S. sample to argue that this either/or distinction not only fails to capture the empirical reality of American religion, it does no justice to the complexity of spirituality. An inductive discursive analysis reveals four primary cultural “packages,” or ways in which people construct the meaning of spirituality in conversation: a Theistic Package tying spirituality to personal deities, an Extra‐Theistic Package locating spirituality in various naturalistic forms of transcendence, an Ethical Spirituality focusing on everyday compassion, and a contested Belief and Belonging Spirituality tied to cultural notions of religiosity. Spirituality, then, is neither a diffuse individualized phenomenon nor a single cultural alternative to “religion.” Analysis of the contested evaluations of Belief and Belonging Spirituality allows a window on the “moral boundary work” being done through identifying as “spiritual but not religious.” The empirical boundary between spirituality and religion is far more porous than is the moral and political one.

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Thanks for starting this discussion. I am probably more aligned with the 'naturalistic form of transcendence' category than the others. I think everything and everyone is part of a universal consciousness.

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I'll have to read the actual article, but from the abstract one thing that seems curious to me is: what is "spiritual" adding to "ethical" in the category of "ethical spirituality"? Is it something to do with notions about the source of moral truths, some belief about the way reality is such that certain ethical precepts are justified? Because otherwise it's not entirely clear to me how being ethical in a spiritual way is different from just being ethical. Like I expect that my moral beliefs are very similar to someone in the US who would describe themselves as an ethical spiritualist. I think we'd similarly talk about human dignity, compassion, love, etc (arguably one of the most useful aspects of the whole "made in the image of God" idea, despite the lack of consistent application...). I just don't tend to think of my ethical commitment to those ideals as spiritual.

 

I've always tended more towards the non-theistic/pantheistic natural transcendence style of spirituality, and have tended not to care very much for religious or quasi-religious approaches to ethics, so the above may just reflect my own biases :P

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Like so many labels these days the term has lost any informative meaning. My father and his last wife were devout fundy Christians and talked incessantly about their spirituality. Christianity is the natural enemy of spiritual by any definition. They are all about legalism and dogma.

 

Guys who love hiking through the mountains call it a spiritual experience and ladies who enjoy a nice sunset with a glass of wine think they're spiritual. Witches and card readers are spiritual but so are the snake handlers in Tennessee. So what does "spiritual" mean in the real world? Whatever you want it to.

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I think one of the goals of the authors is to try to find out exactly what people do mean by "spiritual", in order to see patterns across the variety of usages. You can gain interesting insights into the world that way, although maybe it's mostly of academic interest.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I take the term to mean a focus on one's own mind, introspection, an enquiring approach to the nature of that mind and of self-identity.

People from any religion and none can be spiritual.

People from any religion and none can fail to be spiritual..

 

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