New Spirituality and Social Engagement

Abstract

For some decades now, the supposedly egocentric character and subsequent lack of social engagement of adherents of new forms of spirituality is discussed without being resolved decisively, as chapter 1 shows. Therefore this empirical, quantitative study was started, with the main research question: ‘Are people involved in new spirituality less socially engaged than others?’ A representative sample of the general population in the Netherlands (N = 4402) was used (the LISS panel), provided by CentERdata in Tilburg. The large diversity in use of the term 'spirituality' makes it hard to define it, and to delimit the group involved in ‘new spirituality’. Chapter 2 analyzes conceptions of ‘spirituality’. It shows that ‘spirituality’ in common parlance has broken away from ‘religion’ and developed into a word mainly used to refer to transcendence and positive inner feelings, including purely ‘secular’ ones. Chapter 3 shows that being 'spiritual' and being 'religious' are becoming different life orientations for a large part of the population. These orientations are reflected in two coherent clusters of beliefs, experiences, and practices of what we call 'new spirituality' on the one hand and 'traditional, church-related religion' on the other. In addition, it appears that 'only-spiritual' (and not 'religious') people and 'only-religious' (and not 'spiritual') people have less 'intensive' spiritual/religious lives than people who describe themselves as 'both spiritual and religious'. Chapter 4 answers the main research question. The target group was determined in two ways: as an ‘unaffiliated spirituality’ group based on self-definition and as a ‘new spirituality’ group based on affinity with ‘new spirituality’ expressions as found in chapter 3. Social engagement was defined as ‘commitment to others that benefits individuals, groups, or society at large’. On most social engagement measures, the target groups are less socially engaged than affiliated or traditionally religious people but more engaged than 'secular' people. In fact, they do not distinguish themselves from the population in general. However, they are more committed to organizations for environmental protection, peace, or animal rights than others. Overall, demographic factors – especially education, age, and gender – are stronger predictors of social engagement than religious and spiritual beliefs, experiences, or practices. The most important spirituality variable that predicts some social engagement measures is connectedness to self, others, and nature. Chapter 5 adds insights in the role of spirituality and social engagement in individual people, by analyzing ten in-depth interviews with people from the ‘unaffiliated spirituality’ group. Three relational patterns were detected between spirituality and social engagement: Crisis, coping, and sharing (sharing of insights and spiritual gifts developed after illness or other problems), Supportive individualism (spiritual individualists standing up for the rights of other individuals), and Proactive connectedness (connectedness to self, others, and nature leading to social engagement). Connectedness appeared to be a central theme in the social engagement of many respondents but was not always part of their spirituality.