Popularity of ‘Spirituality’: Ditching Religion or Turning to it?

Document Type : The Quarterly Jornal

Author

Faculty, Islamic Sciences and Culture Academy

Abstract

Do we live the age of turning to religion? Is the popularity of spirituality means a turn to religiosity? While spirituality has been traditionally defined as part of religion, it is currently imagined apart from religion so that spirituality minus religion is thought to be more fashionable. The main problem of this study is what factors in our age has led to a kind of turn from religion to spirituality? What are the meanings of religiosity from which modern human is fleeing in a way that he names all his elevating concerns as spirituality? In other words, the main question of this paper is what grounds (esp. sociocultural) has made some seek spirituality without religion? Secondly, what are the characteristics of spirituality in the current turn of religion? Weuse some theories of sociology of religion and culture- including subjectivism, self-assertivism, post-materialism, and the theory of cultural narcissism- to figure out some major reasons of the emergence of non-religious spirituality; Through the analysis of the theories, we try to know how much emphasis on human soul in the process of spirituality-seeking makes religion enter a new phase in which under the name of spirituality, a kind of individual and selfish religiosity becomes popular, instead of the known revelation-oriented religiosity.

Keywords


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