The Very Quiet Spiritual Revolution

It has been quiet on the blogging front, but as with the previous posts, a book got me thinking aloud. And I think this is important–for us sociologists of religion at least.

Everyone knows The Spiritual Revolution by Heelas, Woodhead, et al. (2005) is one of the most cited books in 21st century sociology of religion. Fewer people realise what a tragic book it also is. Tragic, because everyone took the title and ran away with it, without apparently reading what the authors say inside. I know what I am talking about, because I’m one of those people. I bought the book in 2005, when I was an enthusiast for the ‘spirituality’ boom, but only cited some snippets that fit my preconceived picture. 16 years later, it is indeed tragic to note how the title took off without reference to the argument itself.

Unlike the 1000 qualitative studies that are variations on the theme ‘I found these spiritual people, hence secularisation theory must be wrong’, Heelas and Woodhead et al. are quite realistic in their assessments. There is very little evidence for a ‘spiritual revolution’ if that means that the ‘holistic milieu’ will compensate for the decline in church-going and other traditional institutional religion. Steve Bruce has been saying this for years, using the Kendal study as an example of bad argumentation, but the authors say the same thing themselves: ‘the growth of the (relatively small) holistic milieu is not compensating for the decline of the (considerably larger) congregational domain’ (p. 48). They leave the door open for potential growth, but this argument is not made with any enthusiasm. My personal hunch is that if the Kendal study was repeated in twenty years’ time (when the authors predict the holistic milieu might take over the congregational domain), there would be very little revolution in the air. The authors’ own counterarguments are much more plausible.

So the book has become this talisman that is wielded whenever one wants to argue against the secularisation paradigm. It is unfortunate, because it contains interesting lessons on data gathering, analysis, and projection. It will be interesting to see how long it takes for the fashion (spirituality GOOD, secularisation BAD) to turn in the sociology of religion. Reading the book itself would be a good start.

 

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