Revitalising spirituality to address 21st century challenges

Our inquiry was motivated by the fact that, while survey data is not clear, many if not most people appear to self-identify as being in some way ‘spiritual’, without quite knowing what that means. Moreover, many seem to recognise that the world’s major problems have ‘spiritual’ elements that are not adequately acknowledged or addressed, partly beca... See more

1. Spirituality is ambiguously inclusive by its nature and cannot be easily defined, but at heart it is about the fact that we are alive at all, rather than our personality or status; it’s about our ‘ground’ in the world rather than our ‘place’ in the world. It is possible and valuable to give spirituality improved intellectual grounding and greate... See more

It feels implausible to imagine we will return to religion in its current form en masse, so we are in this curious post-secular state where socially and politically we need the emphasis on solidarity, practice and experience previously found in religion to defend the integrity of the public realm, but culturally and intellectually we can’t go back ... See more

3. Spirituality struggles to differentiate itself from religion on the one hand, and wellbeing on the other. To become a viable part of public discourse, we need to map out distinctive terrain that goes beyond emotions but doesn’t collapse into ethics or aesthetics. Our inquiry led us to four main features of human existence that help with this pro... See more

2. Some recent developments in neural and cognitive sciences do significantly help to contextualise the nature and value of spiritual perspectives, experiences and practices. We selected six: • Our deeply social nature highlights that ‘beliefs’ are not propositional. • Cultural cognition helps explain why the sacred won’t go away. • Automaticity re... See more

4. We need the spiritual to play a greater role in the public realm, because it highlights the importance of connecting personal and social and political transformation. Spirituality already informs various spheres of public life in subtle ways, for instance, addiction, psychiatry, nursing, education and social and environ- mental activism. The ove... See more