Abstract
Modern non-religious spirituality is a subject of immense complexity, which has attracted much attention and sparked lots of debate among scholars during the last two decades. MacKian’s new book, Everyday Spirituality, explores this widely disputed territory, appealing to scholars interested in an empirical analysis of spirituality as well as all those individuals who simply find themselves on a spiritual quest while trying to give meaning to their daily lives. As stated in the first chapter, the central goal of the book is to highlight the growing significance of spirituality in the social and spatial worlds of those individuals who experience spiritual awakening. Chapter 2 provides a critique of the existing literature; Chapters 3 and 4 suggest an alternative reading of spirituality; Chapters 5, 6 and 7 present a socio-cultural model of spirituality; Chapter 8 focuses on the practical implications of spirituality revolving around the concept of healing; and Chapter 9 concludes the debate.
In the first pages of the book MacKian makes it clear to the reader that the participants in her study are ‘those who are actively involved in developing a non-religious link with the spirit’ (p. 14). So, she focuses solely on the manifestation of spirituality in the form of socio-cultural constructions that go beyond religion. Arguably, such a priori exclusion of religion does not preclude the need to clarify the link between the religious and the spiritual, nor does it prove that the two are mutually exclusive categories that can be studied separately. One might wonder whether it is so easy to disconnect religious and spiritual practices, especially if one takes into consideration that the former are often based on some sort of spiritual groundedness. In fact, finding similar spiritual expressions in religious practices could have reinforced her argument about the significance of spirituality in current societies.
The author puts her finger on some of the shortcomings of the previous debates, which describe contemporary spirituality simply as an expression of consumerist culture or as a leisure activity. She aims to go beyond such conceptualization by putting spirit, and its enchantment, at the heart of the concept of spirituality. Spirit is described as ‘something the individual can harness and utilize, even if the individual cannot always understand precisely what it is helping’ (p. 58). In other words, spirit is something which exists in a dimension other than ours and makes itself present through awe, magic and other forms that transcend space and time. This somewhat loose conceptualization helps MacKian to capture the fluidity and variety of spiritual experiences. At the same time, however, such a broad and generic description creates obstacles to conceptualizing spirituality as a unique form in its own right. She has in mind a vague spirituality which ‘does not seem to be … heading anywhere or getting anywhere in particular’ (p. 70) and which is found in the ‘messiness … of everyday life’ (p. 72). Following this logic, it is not really possible to make statements about the ontology of spirituality. In practice, any sort of inspiration could help us reach some altered forms of consciousness which can eventually be translated to spiritual discourses.
In my opinion, MacKian’s main contribution to the spirituality debate is to shift the research focus from the concept of the self to the concept of relatedness or relational consciousness. Spirituality is a relational process that does not make us selfish or narcissistic; on the contrary, it ingrains in us an ‘in-depth sense of belonging with others’ (p. 128). According to MacKian, relational consciousness is not only about strong social ethics but also about relating with the spirit, which is an independent agent that goes beyond self-construction. In fact, spirit represents the other and spirituality is our encounter with the other in our everyday life experiences, which we then are able to share through discursive constructs. In other words, spirituality is not carried intrinsically by each individual, but it is established in a relational process and is thus a truly socio-cultural phenomenon. But she could perhaps go a little deeper, discussing how discourses of spirituality produce significant change in the material or spatial world, particularly in the public sphere and politics.
In the concluding section, MacKian reminds us of the difficulty of finding a methodology to study spirituality. MacKian suggests that scholars should be more open-minded to incorporate imagination and creativity within the confines of scientific research. This approach stimulates new thinking but, in the end, it remains a compromise rather than a concrete solution. The extent to which it is feasible and desirable to study spirituality within a scientific framework remains open to debate, and will no doubt continue to constitute a major challenge for future studies on spirituality.