Psychology of religion: towards a disappearance of spiritual beliefs?

According to McSherry (2000), our modern age, with its concern for individualism, technology and sciences, witnesses the “disappearance of spirituality”.

At the same time, other movements seem still emerge, underlying the idea that a disappearance of spirituality would not be at work, but that it would be more like a mutation of it. The designation New Religious Movement (NRM) is used, notably by Mayer and Kranenborg (2004) to designate within the contemporary religious field, a multitude of currents that deviate more or less clearly from traditionally existing religious traditions. Since some decades, the process of globalization has accelerated the development of these movements. As the NRM field is large and in constant motion, Mayer and Kraenborg (2004) propose several parameters from which we can classify the different movements: the relation to the sacred books, the question of the sources and their eclecticism, the organization and the structure, doctrines and beliefs, rituals and practices as well as interactions with the dominant religious culture.

The NRM study also has the specificity of being quite strongly marked by Anglo-Saxon sociology. According to Altglas (2005), while in France, in the 1960s, the social sciences were more interested in narrowing the religious field, the American sociology has instead developed a preferential interest in religious innovations and highlight the idea of a spiritual awakening. This idea of awakening seems to be very present when we draw up an inventory of religiousness in the 1960s. The New Age movement was born precisely at this epoch. Qualified by Champion (1993) as a “mystic-esoteric nebula”, the New Age advocates the idea of a change of era, including a radical qualitative change of human behavior, including spirituality. This movement or eclectic network, wishing to position itself at the interface between spiritual and scientific, brings together a broad quantity of practices, writings, theses, etc. The idea behind it is that a transformation of each individual will allow the whole humanity to access this new era (Rappin, 2011). In its American branch, New Age is supported by Maslow (1968) and Rogers (1968) through their Movement of Human Potential. Maslow (1972) speaks in particular of paroxysmal experiments to describe experiments giving rise to modified states of perception, during which the universe would be perceived as an integrated and unified whole, without any spatial-temporal landmarks. According to Maslow (1972), as the name suggests, paroxysmal experiences would be the climax of what human being can feel in terms of positive feelings, there would be no greater happiness neither greater sense of well-being. Based on these schools of thought, NRM and New-Age, the body is a privileged place for the emergence of a new spirituality. New Age advocates unity between body and mind, humanity and the world, part and all (Rappin, 2011), and this idea is eminently spiritual, and very present in a lot of contemporary practices, such as yoga, meditation, tai chi, etc.

So, in light of these paradigms, are we really facing a disappearance of spirituality, or are we just facing a transformation of it ?

References

Altglas, V. (2005). « Les mots brûlent » : sociologie des Nouveaux Mouvements Religieux et déontologie. Archives de sciences sociales des religions, 1, 165-188. https://doi.org/10.4000/assr.3264

Champion, F. (1989). « Les sociologues de la post-modernité religieuse et la nébuleuse mystique ésotérique », Archives des sciences sociales des religions, 67(1), 155-169.

Champion, F. (1993). « Le Nouvel Âge : recomposition ou décomposition de la tradition « théo-spiritualiste » ? », Politica Hermetica, 7, 114-122.

Maslow, A. (1968). Toward a psychology of being. New-York : Van Nostrand.

Mayer, J.-F., et Kranenborg, R. (Éd.). (2004). La naissance des nouvelles religions. Genève: Georg.

McSherry, W. (2000). Making Sense of Spirituality in Nursing Practice. London : Churchill Livingstone.

Rappin, B. (2011). Le talent du coach. Le new age et son influence dans le coaching comme nouveau mode de régulation de la déception sociale. Revue internationale de psychosociologie, XVII(41), 157-170. https://doi.org/10.3917/rips.041.0157

Rogers, C. (1968). Le développement de la personne. Paris : Dunod.