User talk:MadeByMaid/sandbox

Moving Article into Mainspace

Hi Brynn, Ruth, Hannah and Michelle, Just a reminder that since last session you should be moving your edited article into mainspace bit by bit. Remember that every time you save an edit, you need to write in an edit summary so that I can tell what's happening - so if you are editing the SBNR mainspace article, your edit summary should include the phrase "moving over edits from sandbox into mainspace." And remember you can keep using the Talk Page here to hash out issues of how to move sections over, and you can keep using the Talk Page on the SBNR article in the mainspace to hash out issues of where things should go, to have conversations with other editors, etc. MonstreDélicat (talk) 18:04, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Hi Spiritual but Not Religious team (and Sharday, I assume!) I'm going to start tackling our assignment here. I've done lots of reading on this topic, and I've read 4 books recently that I think will really help us tackle SBNRs. I've listed them below!

Carrette, Jeremy and Richard King. Selling Spirituality: The Silent Takeover of Religion. New York: Routledge, 2005. Print.
Heelas, Paul. Spiritualities of Life: New Age Romanticism and Consumptive Capitalism. Oxford: Blackwell, 2008. Print.
Heelas, Paul and Linda Woodhead. The Spiritual Revolution: Why Religion is Giving Way to Spirituality. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005. Print
Martin, Craig. Capitalizing Religion: Ideology and the Opiate of the Bourgeoisie. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. Print.

Don't be scared away by the titles, I promise these aren't all Leftist tirades (okay, maybe Martin's is. But it's still a very scholarly Marxist tirade). What's so great about these books and their analysis of the capitalistic function of spirituality is that they really take into account the global context/economies of the bourgeoning SBNR identity. It has been argued quite persuasively by these (and other) academics that the spirituality is, in many ways, a commodity to be bought and sold (see Carrette & King and Martin, especially). I think these will be useful for our assignment, but we need to make sure our use of them doesn't veer into the persuasive/argumentative realm, since this is Wikipedia!

Heelas' books are more sociological examinations of the SBNR movements. Heelas and Woodhead evaluate whether forms of holistic practice are becoming more popular by using the market town of Kendal, England as a case study for their spiritual revolution theory. They argue that Western civilization has taken a "Subjective Turn" in which we have moved away from 'objective' roles and obligations (mother, churchgoer, etc.) toward 'subjective' life in which one's own unique desires, capabilities, and relationalities are taken into account. They argue that we have rejected 'live-as' (life as mother, life as business owner) to 'subjective-life - "life lived in deep connection with the unique experiences of my self-in-relation." Woodhead and Heelas assert it is this subjective turn that has given rise to the proliferation of the SBNR movement.

In Religion and Spirituality, Heelas takes on the authors above who argue that spirituality is just an extension of capitalism to be consumed. He attempts to place the SBNR movement into a historical lineage of inner-life spirituality from what he sees as it's Romantic origins - that's why I think it will be a good resource if we want to track the history of the "Spiritual but not Religious" movement on its wiki page!

This is really preliminary, but here's how I might rewrite the lead section! I just made a few changes, but I didn't want to go overboard without you all. Feel free to edit!

"Spiritual but not religious" (SBNR) is a popular phrase and initialism used to self-identify a life stance of spirituality that rejects traditional organized religion as the sole or most valuable means of furthering spiritual growth. Spirituality places an emphasis upon the wellbeing of the "mind-body-spirit," so "holistic" activities such as tai chi, reki, and yoga are common within the SBNR movement. In contrast to religion, spirituality has often been associated with the interior life of the individual.

The term is used world-wide, but is most prominent in the United States where one study reports that as many as 33% of people identify as spiritual but not religious. Other surveys report lower percentages ranging from 24% to 10%. The term has been called cliché by popular religious writers such as Robert Wright, but is gaining in popularity. The SBNR lifestyle is most studied in the population of the United States]. Some scholars argue that early forms of modern "spirituality" can be traced to origins in Romanticism.

Hi Brynn, I like the look of this! Another important aspect of SBNR is the fact that people come into SBNR because they are pulling away from religion as an institution.

How about: The term is used world-wide, but is most prominent in the United States where one study reports that as many as 33% of people identify as spiritual but not religious. Many of these people became "Spiritual But Not Religious" as a result of being suspicious of religion or and critical of'extreme', 'exclusive', 'pushy', 'dictated' or'rigid' religion. Michellerow (talk) 15:16, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

As so far to get working on the editing aspect I was thinking that we should add some sections to the article Intro Definition History Religion and Spirituality Western context Demographics Popular culture

Organizing our headings can help direct our research/thought process. I looked at some other articles in the Religion and Spirituality portals to come up with ideas for the headings. Any other ideas? Michellerow (talk) 20:44, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Hi everyone! Firstly, I really like where you're going with the lead section, Brynn. It's concise and easy to understand. Also, I find that when reading articles on Wikipedia, the way in which the sections are broken up is really important for clarity purposes, so I really like what Michelle has come up with in terms of headings. --Hpearlman (talk) 20:11, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Hi ladies! Thank you guys for directing me to the sandbox! So I'm still getting the hang of how to use Wikipedia but I found a few articles that might also be of interest to us. Nancy Ammerman has an article in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion called "Spiritual But Not Religious? Beyond Binary Choices in the Study of Religion". The 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. Ruthchitiz (talk) 22:17, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Hi Ruth! Ooo these are helpful sources! We could fit this under the "Definition" section. Michellerow (talk) 17:37, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Hi guys. Im currently reading this article that I think might be interesting/worth reading. I will add his main points to the sandbox as soon as I finish reading. The article is called "What's in a Name? A Brief Introduction to the "Spiritual But Not Religious"" by Philip D. Kenneson. You can find it on the Queen's library website. Ruthchitiz (talk) 18:00, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

I think Kenneson hits the nail on the head here (and these ideas really touch on what Galen Watts spoke about in his lecture). "A clear example of the rhetorical divorce of spirituality from religion is revealed in how the spiritual has come to be associated in the popular imagin- ation with the largely individual quest for––and expression of––transcendent experiences and meaning, while the religious has become narrowly defined in terms of more formal institutional structures, rituals, and theological dogma...s a result, in cultures that are deeply suspicious of institutional structures and that place a high value on individual freedom and autonomy, spirituality has come to have largely positive connotations, while religion has come to be regarded more negatively." Ruthchitiz (talk) 18:12, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

I read Kenneson's article and definitely think there are aspects are worth including for our assignment. Perhaps we could include the quote above in the "Religion and Spirituality" section.

There is also a section in Kenneson's article under "What Does It Mean To Be Spiritual?" that I thought could be interesting/relevant to add. "Ammerman suggests that people who identify themselves as spiritual but not religious are doing so primarily to draw a moral boundary that helps distinguish them from those considered less virtuous. For example, those conservative and evangelical Christians who have long considered their faith to be a matter of a personal and spiritual relationship with Jesus rather than a mere religion do so because they want to make a moral distinction between themselves and those whom they regard as simply going through the (religious) motions." Do we think that this could be useful in some way? Thoughts? --Hpearlman (talk) 20:11, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

I was trying to find sources we could use for "History" or "Demographics" and I came across an article called "Spiritual But Not Religious: The Influence of the Current Romantic Movement" by Owen Thomas. "A significant number of people today identify themselves as "spintual but not religious/' distancing themselvesfrom continuing religious traditions of formation. Various explanations have been offered for this. This article claims that this phenomenon is the result of the influence of a new Romantic movement that began to emerge in the 1960s. Histonans, sociologists, philoso- phers, and contemporary theologians give evidence for such a new movement, which is found in popular culture, and in post- modernism, neoconservatism, the new consumerism, and espe- cially in the current spirituality movement. Romantic movements tend to disparage traditional religion and to affirm unorthodox, exotic, esoteríc, mystical, and individualistic spiritualities; this is true ofthe current spirítuality movement. The current spintuality movement also resembles Romantic movements in its ambiguity, and in its destructive as well as constructive tendencies." I'm not entirely sure if this could be useful, but I thought maybe some of the information could be used under the "History" section. As Brynn said earlier, we can look at the Romantic origins to track the history of SBNR! --Hpearlman (talk) 20:11, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

This is also a useful quote from Robert C. Fuller who writes "Spiritual, But Not Religious: Understanding Unchurched America": "They [individuals who associate themselves as being SBNR] feel a tension between their personal spirituality and membership in a conventional religious organization. Most of them value curiosity, intellec- tual freedom, and an experimental approach to religion. They often find established religious institutions stifling. Many go so far as to view organized religion as the major enemy of authentic spirituality. Genuine spirituality, they believe, has to do with personal efforts to achieve greater harmony with the sacred. For them spirituality has to do with private reflection and private experience—not public ritual." Ruthchitiz (talk) 18:15, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Ah all this looks so awesome! From here on to avoid any overlap I'm thinking it would be beneficial to divide up the headings/sections. Anyone have any preference of sections? Michellerow (talk) 21:34, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Different Paths, Different Goals

Kennesson cites Mercadante’s extensive research on SBNRs, which basically cautions against lumping all SBNRs together, and instead distinguishes five main types of SBNR practitioners based on their rationale for regarding themselves as SBNR and the shape of their journey: Dissenters, Casuals, Explorers, Seekers, and Immigrants. "Dissenters are SBNRs who stay away from institutional religion altogether for any number of reasons. Some (who Mercadante calls “protesting dissenters”) have been wounded by religious institutions or have rejected certain theological tenets and consider themselves to have washed their hands entirely of religious institutions....Mercadante calls “drifted dissenters” those who have less open antagonism toward religion but who have drifted away from religious institutions and never returned, either as a result of falling out of the habit of attending or because they had fewer and fewer compelling reasons to remain active. Mercadante calls Casuals those SBNRs for whom spirituality is neither an organizing principle nor the subject of regular sustained attention. These SBNRs may “read books on spirituality, seek out a teacher, attend services or rituals occasionally, but only on an ‘as needed’ basis. They drop these things when no longer applicable. [More of a therapeutic spirituality]...As the name suggests, Mercadante’s Explorers are those SBNRs who revel in the spiritual journey, trying one thing and then another, but with little or no interest in actually settling anywhere for long. They move on “as much from unsatisfied curiosity and the desire for novelty as from disappointment,” finding this “destination-less, almost touristic, journey fun, stimulating, exciting, and/or a welcome antidote to a crass secular world.”26 Mercadante’s Seekers are quite similar to Explorers except that the former are actually looking for a spiritual home, a place of belonging, and often suffer deep disappointment if they fail to find one. Although there is considerable debate among scholars about how many SBNRs are actually Seekers, Mercadante admits that her interviews surfaced “fewer than religious leaders hope for but more than some research might predict... Mercadante’s fifth and final group, Immigrants, is her name for those SBNRs who are in the process of moving into a new spiritual heritage with all its attendant challenges, but who have not yet found themselves enough at home to regard themselves as permanent residents of this new spiritual landscape." Ruthchitiz (talk) 18:25, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Hannah this article is perfect for your section of the wiki edits. Take a look:http://www.pewforum.org/files/2012/10/NonesOnTheRise-full.pdf Ruthchitiz (talk) 21:50, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

Spirituality in Religion

What is spirituality?

There have been sociocultural trends towards deinstitutionalization, individualization, and globalization has led authors such as Pargament, to explain the increased attention to ‘spirituality’. People are critical of religion because they see it as rigid and pushy, leading people to use terms such as atheist, agnostic. SBNR is not just about rejecting religion outright, but not wanting to be restricted by it. Those who identify as SBNR feel a tension between their personal spirituality and membership in a conventional religious organization. Most of them value curiosity, intellectual freedom, and an experimental approach to religion. Many go as far to view organized religion as the major enemy of authentic spirituality. Spirituality is private reflection and private experience—not public ritual. To appreciate the “god within” is not a twentieth century notion linked to the 1960s counterculture with its eastern-mystical or hippie drug scene or even the 1980s New Age movement for that matter. Spirituality is made up of three parts: nature, divine wisdom from a high power, and the self.

Religion vs spirituality?

To be religious conveys an institutional connotation: to attend worship services, to say Mass, to light Hanukkah candles. To be spiritual in contrast, is more personal and empowering and has to do with the deepest motivations of life. As a result in cultures that are deeply suspicious of institutional structures and that place a high value on individual freedom and autonomy, spirituality has come to have largely positive connotations, while religion ca be viewed more negatively. Abrahamic traditions emphasize that one’s best bet is to look outside to a higher power that can guide and correct your corporeal misjudgements. In these traditions, God above is the source of wisdom and illumination. Spirituality is about much more than going to church and agreeing or disagreeing with church doctrines. Spirituality is the shorthand term we use in our society to talk about a person’s relationship with God. For many people, how they think about it is certainly guided by what they see and do in their congregations. At a deeper level, it involves a person’s self-identity—feeling loved by God, and these feelings can wax and wane. The concept of religion is a social construct, since in other eras, religion, culture, and even national identity were often inseparable. And as for spirituality, this is an old concept with a new usage. Previous to today’s era, what people today call spirituality was often called piety. Religion is seen as a complex adaptive network of myths, symbols, rituals and concepts that simultaneously figure patterns of feeling, thinking, and acting and disrupt stable structures of meaning and purpose. When understood in that way, religion not only involves ideas and practices that are manifestly religious but also includes a broad range of cultural phenomenon not ordinarily associated with religion. Many people use spirituality to refer to their interior life of faith and religion to mean the necessary communal and/or organizational part. Both spirituality and religion consist of four basic components: beliefs, desire, rituals, and behavioural expectations. When Mercandante have spoken with SBNRs, they take a decidedly anti-dogmatic stance against religious belief in general. They claim not only that belief is non-essential, but that it is potentially harmful or at least a hindrance to spirituality.

Supernatural

What both religion and spirituality have in common is a sense of the supernatural. In Colonial America, those who today would identify as “spiritual but not religious” had a supernatural curiosity that was often combined with free-thinking rationalism advocated by intellectuals such as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. The SBNR phenomenon is a mix of intellectual progressivism and mystical hunger, impatient with the piety of established churches.

Definition

According to a study conducted by Pew Research Center in 2012, the number of Americans who do not identify with any religion has increased from 15% in 2007 to 20% in 2012, and continues to grow. One fifth of the US public and a third of adults under the age of 30 are reportedly unaffiliated with any religion, however they identify as being spiritual in some way. Of these religiously unaffiliated Americans, 37% classify themselves as spiritual but not religious, while 68% say they do believe in God and 58% feel a deep connection to the earth.

Generational replacement has been understood as a significant factor of the growth of religiously unaffiliated individuals. Notable differences were found amongst the percentage of those considered younger millennials (born 1990-1994) and Gen Xers (born 1965-1980) with 34% and 21% reporting to be religiously unaffiliated, respectively.

Demographically, research has found that the religiously unaffiliated population is younger, predominately male, and 35% are between the ages of 18-29. Conversely, only 8% of religiously unaffiliated individuals are 65 and older. The unaffiliated population is more male than the general public. Among the unaffiliated as a whole, 56% are men and 44% are women.

The spiritual but not religious phenomenon has been thought to emerge as a result of a new Romantic movement that began in the 1960s. The relationship between the two has been linked to William James’ definition of religious experience, which he defines as the “feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine.” Romantic movements tend to lean away from traditional religion and resemble spiritual movements in their endorsement of mystical, unorthodox, and exotic ways. Owen Thomas also states that the ambiguity that is present in Romantic movements is also present within spiritual movements.

Another possible explanation for the emergence of SBNR is its linguistic. Owen Thomas highlights the fact that the spirituality movements tends to be limited to English and North American cultures, thus the meaning of the term “spirit” is more narrow in English than that of other languages, referring to all of the uniquely human capacities and cultural functions.

Criticism

Some representatives of organized religion have criticized the practice of spirituality without religiosity. Reverend Lillian Daniel, a liberal Protestant minister, has characterized the SBNR worldview as a product of secular American consumer culture, far removed from community and "right smack in the bland majority of people who find ancient religions dull but find themselves uniquely fascinating". James Martin, a Jesuit priest, has called the SBNR lifestyle "plain old laziness", stating that "[s]pirituality without religion can become a self-centered complacency divorced from the wisdom of a community".

Other critics contend that within the “Spiritual but Not Religious” worldview, self-knowledge and self-growth have been problematically equated with knowledge of God, directing a person’s focus inward. As a result, the political, economic, and social forces that shape the world are neglected and left untended. Further, some scholars have noted the relative spiritual superficiality of particular SBNR practices. Classical mysticism within the world’s major religions require sustained dedication, often requiring prolonged asceticism, extended devotion to prayer, and the cultivation of humility. In contrast, SBNRs in the Western world are encouraged to dabble in spiritual practices in a way that is often casual and lacking in rigor or any reorganization of priorities. Sociologist Robert Wuthnow suggests that these forms of mysticism are “shallow and inauthentic.” Other critics take issue with the intellectual legitimacy of SBNR scholarship. When contrasted with professional or academic theology, spiritual philosophies can appear unpolished, disjointed, or inconsistently sourced.

Wong and Vinsky challenge SBNR discourse that posits religion as “institutional and structured” in contrast to spirituality as “inclusive and universal” (1346). They argue that this understanding makes invisible the historical construction of “spirituality,” which currently relies on a rejection of EuroChristianity for its own self-definition. Western discourses of “spirituality” appropriate Indigenous spiritual traditions and "ethnic" traditions of the East, yet racialized ethnic groups are more likely to be labeled “religious” by white SBNR practitioners. Wong and Vinsky assert that through these processes, colonial othering is enacted through SBNR discourse.

Types

SBNRs are made up of heterogeneous and differing typologies. While no individual fits exhaustively into or remains permanently in one type, Linda A. Mercandante categorizes SBRNs into five distinct categories: (a) Dissenters, (b) Casuals, (c) Explorers, (d) Seekers, and (e) Immigrants.

1. “Dissenters” are the people who, for the most part, make a conscious effort to veer away from institutional religion. “Protesting dissenters” refers to those SBNRs who have been ‘turned off’ religious affiliations because of adverse personal experiences with it. “Drifted Dissenters” refers to those SBNRs who, for a multitude of reasons, fell out of touch with organized religion and chose never to go back. “Conscientious objector dissenters” refers to those SBNRs who are overtly skeptical of religious institutions and are of the view that religion is not a useful or necessary part of an individual’s spirituality.
2. “Casuals” are the people who see religious and/or spiritual practices as primarily functional. Spirituality is not an organizing principle in their lives, but rather should be used on an as-needed basis for bettering one’s health, relieving one’s stress, and for emotional support. “Casuals” spirituality is thus best understood as a “therapeutic” spirituality that centers on the individual’s personal wellbeing. “Explorers” are the people who seem to have what Mercandante refers to as a “spiritual wanderlust”. These SBNRs find their constant search for novel spiritual practices to be a byproduct of their “unsatisfied curiosity”, their desire for journey and change, as well as feelings of disappointment.
3. Explorers are best understood as “spiritual tourists” who take comfort in the destination-less journey of their spirituality and have no intentions of ultimately committing to a spiritual home.
4. “Seekers” are those people who are looking for a spiritual home but contemplate recovering earlier religious identities. These SBNRs embrace the “spiritual but not religious label” and are eager to find a completely new religious identity or alternative spiritual group that they can ultimately commit to. “Immigrants” are those people who have found themselves in a novel spiritual realm and are trying to adjust themselves to this newfound identity and its community.
5. “Immigrants” can be best understood as those SBNRs who are “trying on” a radically new spiritual environment but have yet to feel completely settled there. It is important to note that for these SBNRs, although they are hoping to become fully integrated in their newfound spiritual identities, the process of acclimation is difficult and often disconcerting.

Practices

Eastern Influences

Twentieth-century Americans have become enthralled by the mysteries of the East, with Jiddu Krishnamurti and D. T. Suzuki representing two of the dozens of Asian gurus who ushered in a “New Age” of religious awareness and spiritual understanding for Westerners. Krishnamurti introduced Americans to an eclectic fusion of occultism, “Vendata teachings of the divinity of the self” infused with Western psychologies of self-reliance. D. T. Suzuki provided Americans with a foundational knowledge of Zen, a central aspect of Buddhist teachings. Both Krishnamurti and Suzuki provided SBNRs with the understanding that the essence of spirituality is comprised in the immediate, temporal and highly mystical experiences of human reality that paradoxically transcend the triviality of everyday existence. The goal of Zen is not to cause individuals to perceive a different sense of “reality” from their current one, but rather to awaken in its practitioners the sacred nature of temporality. Many SBNRs were drawn to Zen ideologies because its actualization can only be achieved through personal spiritual experiences rather than logical thought or rationality. Another common practice of SBNRs is mindfulness meditation, which is based on the writings of the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thích Nhất Hạnh. The most successful Eastern-based movement to be transported to and reformulated for a Western audience is Transcendental Meditation. Founded by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Transcendental Meditation is based on a simplified form of yoga consisting of two fifteen to twenty minute periods daily where the practitioner is taught to sit comfortably, relax, and chant a one-syllable mantra. The purpose of this mantra is to help practitioners let go of their attachment to the external world and focus their spiritual energy inwards.

Feminist and Ecological Spiritualities

Spiritualist and New Thought movements such as Spiritual but not Religious created new opportunities for women to veer away from the androcentrism of Abrahamic traditions and blaze their own spiritual paths. Many of the themes that are quintessential to feminist spiritual and religious thought are also embodied in ecological spiritualities. Ecological spiritualities are best understood as being rooted in the belief that the natural world is a medium for divine revelation and that nature possesses a spiritual worth that goes beyond the functional utility it might have for humans. The considerable overlap between ecological and feminist spiritualities can be seen in their shared central tenets of “inner growth, ecological wisdom, gender equality, and social responsibility.”

Neo‐Paganism and Witchcraft

Neo-Paganism refers to the renewed interest in pre-Christian nature-oriented beliefs. Gerald Gardner’s publication of Witchcraft Today was foundational in the promulgation of nature-based religions, most popularly Wicca. Shamanic, Druidic, Gaian and ceremonial magic practitioners are all forms of spirituality that have resurfaced in modern times. Witches#Wicca understand the God of biblical monotheism to be inextricably bound to sexism, racism, ecological exploitation, as well as the exercise of power over others. Modern witchcraft seeks to encourage individuals to tap into the “mysterious reservoirs of inner power and use the magic of their own minds to focus this energy into healing activity within the world.” These New Age religions also extend to a wide and multifarious spectrum of interest in the supernatural. Some New Age spiritual practices include astrology, Ouija boards, Tarot cards, the I Ching, and science fiction.

Music and Meaning

Musicologist David Carr explains how many individuals have sought to develop secular or “religiously untethered” senses of spirituality through the spiritual power of music. Forms of artistic expression, such as painting and music, are said to evoke a sense of awe and wonder, where the individual is temporarily transported to another dimension far-removed from the trivialities of everyday existence. Musician and theologian June Boyce-Tillman emphasizes how music “takes us out of ‘everyday’ consciousness with its concerns for food, clothing and practical issues” and moves us into a self-transcending experience. For many SBNRs, music has become the basis of their spirituality as opposed to a partner to it.

Ruthchitiz (talk) 19:13, 10 November 2015 (UTC)