The Shape of Spirituality: The Public Significance of a Religious Transformation (Columbia University Press, 2024)
Co-Edited with Dick Houtman
Around 20 percent of Americans fall into the category of “spiritual but not religious.” Yoga has become a ubiquitous pastime for middle-class Westerners. Mindfulness is increasingly incorporated into school curricula, sports programs, and even corporate culture. Hollywood icons and Silicon Valley trendsetters tout the benefits of a “spiritual” life. These developments reflect a widespread turn away from “religion” toward “spirituality.” Yet the nature of this spiritual turn is still poorly understood, and its consequences sorely underappreciated.
The Shape of Spirituality brings together leading sociologists to challenge common notions that spirituality is individualistic, privatized, and apolitical—and to make the definitive case for its social and political significance. Contributors examine the sweeping influence of spirituality on a variety of realms, including health care and therapeutic practice, popular culture, civic engagement, public protest, conspiracy culture, and progressive politics. Leveraging cutting-edge quantitative and qualitative data, this authoritative book makes clear that, far from being marginal and inconsequential, spirituality holds profound public importance today.
Endorsements
"This fascinating collection makes a powerful case for contemporary spirituality as a new religious movement. The Shape of Spirituality offers radical new analyses showing that it is real religion and that it has, almost unnoticed, become integral to schools and doctors’ offices, Silicon Valley technovisions, and civic and social-justice activism. Taking spirituality seriously, this volume shows, is essential for understanding religion’s significant current role in our collective life.”
— Ann Swidler, Professor of the Graduate School at UC Berkeley and author of Talk of Love.
"This collection demonstrates the growing public significance of holistic spiritualities, making a powerful case that the shift from religion to spirituality signals a profound reconfiguration as important as the one that is shaking the political sphere in this age of populism. Lifting the blinders that the secularization paradigm continues to pull over our understanding of the spiritual turn, this book reveals an epochal shift away from Christianity in the West.”
— François Gauthier, Professor of Religious Studies at the Université de Fribourg and author of Religion, Modernity, Globalisation: Nation-State to Market
"Challenging conventional accounts of secularization, Houtman and Watts assemble essays by many of the leading scholars of contemporary spirituality, showing that Western spirituality is far more coherent and influential than the received wisdom suggests.”
— Philip Gorski, Frederick and Laura Goff Professor of Sociology at Yale University and coauthor of The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy