The Spiritual and the Political: Beyond Russell Brand

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

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

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