Spirituality

“I think what he means is that lots of people today are trying to hold to a version of Christianity without the church. That is, without the institutions and traditions and theology that constitute a ‘religion.’ They are trying to have Christian spirituality–prayer, religious experience, a personal relationship with Jesus–without the Christian religion.

“Religious faith is ‘fragmenting’ in the UK as more than one in ten people who abandon Christianity in Britain take up paganism, wicca or another form of ‘spiritualism,’ according to the report.” - The Times

“Around the world, many people who do not identify with any religion nevertheless hold a variety of spiritual and religious beliefs, including the belief that there is life after death, according to a Pew Research Center study of religiously unaffiliated adults in 22 countries.” - Pew

“Our statistical analyses found that supernatural beliefs in the United States tend to group into four types. The first represents what many consider ‘traditional religious beliefs.’ These include beliefs in God, the existence of angels and demons….

“Why the sudden interest? One London-based creator who has 1.2 million followers on TikTok suggests that her predominantly Gen Z followers had turned to astrology for a ‘sense of agency’ when life felt chaotic.” - Church & Culture

“One on hand, the discussion indicates a growing, widespread exhaustion with secular materialism. Across culture, including politics, there are indications of what some are calling ‘re-enchantment.’ Where Klein and Douthat (and many others) disagree, is whether or not this new openness to the mystical, spiritual, and other-worldly will be helpful or dangerous.” - Breakpoint

“Just because religious behavior and affiliation have taken a nosedive in the last 30 years does not mean America is suddenly a secular country.” - RNS

“People are breaking free not with bolt cutters but with deeply personal acts of spiritual rebellion, rejecting the rationalized, systematized, and institutionalized religious constructs of modernity in favor of more dynamic, diverse, and syncretic expressions.” - CPost

“secular materialism is going out of style, being replaced by a renewed fascination with spirituality, the occult, and the supernatural. But this resurgent spirituality is often deeply unserious, treating actual religious doctrines like items on a buffet.” - Breakpoint

“Perhaps Solzhenitsyn was right in his Harvard address, that the Communist East and the Capitalist West were fundamentally the same–deeply materialistic at their core. If this is true, then this resurgent interest in religiosity or spirituality is simply a thin veneer that, when scratched, reveals the same old materialism and secularism.” - Mere Orthodoxy