Abstract
In The Spiritual Turn, Galen Watts addresses narratives and conditions surrounding people’s quest for self-understanding and meaning in a disenchanted late-modern society. He builds on the shoulders of Émile Durkheim, Robert Bellah et al.’s Habits of the Heart, cultural sociology, intellectual history, and political philosophy. In the first seven chapters, he charts the intellectual and social shifts from ‘religion’ to ‘spirituality’ that coalesced with the rise of the romantic liberal modern age. Watts’ survey of these developments showcases an ambitious interaction with a broad literature, culminating in thoughtful and original arguments. In the final third of the book, Watts focuses on Canadian-based data collected between 2014 and 2018. This includes interviews with 50 ‘spiritual but not religious’ millennials, plus participant observations with a Twelve Step group, a neo-Pentecostal church, and a Toastmasters public-speaking club. Readers who value empirical data will cherish these latter chapters, likely longing for more of his data to anchor the rest of the book, along with incorporating quantitative data from elsewhere.
In contrast to proponents of secularization theory, Watts incorporates a functionalist understanding of religion and spirituality, arguing that ‘the 1960s were a period of tremendous religious ferment . . . they mark the era when the religion of the heart moved from the cultural margins into the mainstream’ (11). Watts contends that this religious transformation beyond institutional religion paralleled a social shift towards romantic liberalism – a world view that protects and sacralizes the private sphere and personal liberty from the public realm by nurturing one’s authentic self and ‘values of tolerance, self-expression, and self-realization’ (91).
A central thread in Watts’ work is Durkheim’s concept of ‘moral individualism’, which sacralizes individual liberty and moral equality while highlighting the risks associated with individualism, such as anomie (lack of social integration) and egoism (lack of moral regulation). For many in this study, social institutions rooted in traditionalism and rationalism contribute to disenchantment, alienation, and personal inauthenticity. Their response is to re-enchant the world via ‘religion of the heart’, stressing feelings, intuition, personal experience, knowing oneself, self-improvement, and the God within. This spiritual turn inwards is captured well in the following quotations: ‘Being spiritual just means being who you really are’ (19; Leslie, Alcoholics Anonymous) and ‘I’m spiritual because I believe being the best me I can be is being spiritual’ (22; Michael, Toastmasters). Contrary to the participants’ beliefs that spirituality is ‘pre-social’, Watts brilliantly highlights the many ways in which people’s spiritual lives reflect cultural, social, and institutional roots.
Watts delineates seven institutional spaces where the romantic liberal order is grounded: holistic milieus (e.g. yoga studios, meditation groups), charismatic Christianity, popular culture, the arts, health care, education and some spheres of the economy. His three case studies land mostly in the first two domains. Watts confidently responds to critics who say that ‘spirituality’ lacks institutional support and the consistency to socialize group members effectively into a common world view. He argues that the combination of group gatherings, personal practices and auxiliary support materials provides an institutionally grounded plausibility structure that sustains ‘religion of the heart’ in late-modern society.
Watts’ important and robust work prompts two opportunities for further debate and exploration. First, how broadly or narrowly should we define ‘religion of the heart’ or spirituality? The challenge with Watts’ functionalist approach is that almost anything counts, which makes the central concept potentially less useful, as demonstrated earlier by Leslie and Michael, or simply seeking to better oneself in Toastmasters. Perhaps stricter definitional boundaries would provide a more helpful conception of religion and spirituality while still granting Watts’ claim that religious transformations (versus declines) are occurring beyond institutional religion. In turn, one could plausibly conclude that both secularization and transformation are occurring within the religious landscape.
The limits of broader definitions are additionally on display when Watts discusses the romantic liberal institutional order. In a footnote, he states that these fields ‘are capable of functioning as plausibility structures for the religion of the heart’ (98). ‘Capable’ is different from ‘actual’. As Watts rightly points out when discussing Toastmasters, ‘whether or not [self-help] discourse is interpreted in a religiously meaningful way depends upon members’ pre-existing attachments and associations’ (195). In other words, Toastmasters is not necessarily the key variable for a unifying ‘spiritual’ plausibility structure. Even so, Watts acknowledges the challenges in Toastmasters to ‘integrate individuals into a cohesive moral community . . . [that] can exacerbate feelings of anomie’ (207). Some might argue that Toastmasters is a stretch for inclusion in a study on ‘religion of the heart’ and spirituality.
Second, this book opens the door to engage with the literature on conversion. Watts helpfully calls attention to personal crises, problems of meaning, and quests for certainty in late-modern society as pathways into the ‘spiritual but not religious’ domain. These spiritual journeys are attempts to counter the risks of anomie and egoism. Yet these variables also apply to those who join many religious groups – notably, conservative and fundamentalist ones. Thus, what is distinct about the pathway into the groups in this study, especially since many of these individuals and groups appear oppositional to the values found in stricter religious communities (despite Watts’ masterful description of the strict in-group/out-group boundaries in Alcoholics Anonymous and the neo-Pentecostal church)? Further comparative work could arise here.
Watts offers a nuanced and thought-provoking analysis of people seeking self-understanding and meaning in late-modern society. Scholars of religion should read this book and then assess the merits of a functionalist versus substantive approach to the spiritual turn.