Abstract
The reemergence of immanentist spiritualities, from New Age spirituality to African traditional spiritualities, has been indicative of the twenty-first century. The influx of these spiritualities in the West has ripples of implications to Christianity. At the least, spirituality has been separated from religiosity, with some people identifying themselves as “spiritual but not religious” (SBNR). This work explores the triangular formulae of new spiritualities (the self, nature, divinity) to understand the intricacies of this divergence between religiosity and spirituality, and the implications for Christianity. It argues that theological negligence might not have directly caused the reemergence of many spiritualities, but it warranted the exit of many Christians into the new spiritualities. Through the appraisal of theological anthropology, natural theology, and spiritual theology, it suggests a reprioritization of Christian theology and a constructive relationship with the new spiritualities.
Introduction
What do people mean when they say “I am spiritual but not religious” (SBNR)? What is spirituality and what is religiosity? Does one or both of them have a foundation in Christianity? 1
In the USA alone there has been a growing percentage increase of 7–8%, between 2007 and 2014, of religious and nonreligious people who claim to be SBNR. 2 In the uncertainty of the accuracy of this pew research, anyone who is engaged in pastoral work, especially in the Western world, would testify to the persistence of this increase and shift in religiosity. That is the reality we are concerned with.
The aims of this work are (a) to understand the basis or causes of the divergence between religiosity and spirituality, and (b) to analyze the implications of such in Christianity.
What are Spirituality and Religiosity?
While researching this article, I realized how complicated it has become to define spirituality and religiosity. Until the cultural revolution of the mid-twentieth century, religiosity and spirituality were almost always considered synonymous. “During this era, especially in the 1960s, a growing disaffection with traditional religion—as well as with traditional society in general—led many individuals to explore spirituality, either as a replacement for or as a byproduct of religion.” 3 That is no longer the case. From the wide spectrum of understandings and orientations which have deflated the usage of the word “religion” and complicated it as a concept, spirituality suffers even greater complication as a concept. While religions have always construed themselves in peculiar spiritualities, there are still many other phenomena that consider themselves spiritualities but are not religions. The long list includes both modern and ancient spiritualities, feminist and ecological spiritualities, New Age spiritualities and eclectic meditations, Wicca, Druid, Gaianism, Shamanism, and so forth. Some of these spiritualities existed long before Christianity and have their peculiar usages and styles of spirituality.
The average distinctive understanding would claim that religiosity connotes the institutional, ritualistic structure of public worship and belief which directs one outwards to a higher power, God, who can judge, reward, or punish one’s corporeal living. Spirituality, on the other hand, would imply the personalized constructs of relating to the god within, an empowerment towards spiritual curiosity and intellectual freedom towards discovering the self.
The conventional understanding of spirituality in Christianity, for example, is that it is a way to holiness … There is only one Christian spirituality because there is only one Christ. However, when the means of union with God become concretized, various styles of approach to this union appear. Any particular style of approach to union with God can properly be called spirituality.
4
Christianity does not have a monopoly on “spirituality.” Therefore, at least for the many people who had a Christian religious foundation but describe themselves as SBNR, addressing the religious–spirituality separation is of considerable importance. The contemporary usage and application of religion and spirituality are not only different from their former usages but are equally almost contradictory. This leads us to the first dimension of our article.
The Basis of Divergence between Spirituality and Religiosity
The Christian concept of God shares in the first place the monotheistic Hebrew quality of transcendence and absoluteness, supreme and ineffable. Yet decisive to the religious identity that separated Christianity from other religions is that this God, out of his goodness for the humans he created, became/becomes human. So, “despite the clear preference for this transcendental or Platonist model, it was the peculiar incarnation concept of God which gradually came to supersede it and which popular orthodox Christianity has cherished down the centuries until today.” 5 In other words, the religiosity and/or spirituality of Christianity is based on the concept that Jesus Christ is the eternal, absolute God, who left his godly glory to be human (Phil 2:6), so he could reconcile humanity to God and elevate it to the godly reunion which was lost. In Jesus Christ is the fullness of God.
The contemporary concept of spirituality, however, has a different approach to God. It has a triangular formula: self–nature–divinity. These three cardinal points summarize the understanding and usage of spirituality. “Arising out of this progressive view of divinity, progressive spirituality promotes the sacralization of nature as the site of divine presence and activity in the cosmos—and the sacralisation of the self for the same reasons.” 6 In the analysis of this triangular formula, we would like to understand the causes of the divergence between spirituality and religiosity.
The Self
A historical current weighed in on Europe in the latter part of the eighteenth century, earning it the description Age of Enlightenment. Its aims were to achieve the freedom of the individual and religious liberty against the authoritarianism of the state and the power of the church, especially the Catholic Church. This age ushered in the liberalism and humanism of the nineteenth century. “The Enlightenment could be called the age of incipient individualism,” 7 leaving a monumental change in the perception of the human person as an individual, even to what may now be described as the absolutism of individualism.
Partly motivated by the need to stop the abuse of power by the church and state hierarchies, and partly from the desire to deflate the authority of the Catholic Church by the separated brethren, there was ecclesiastical propaganda and theological effort to empower individuals, not the institutions. It was in this context that Friedrich Immanuel Niethammer pushed the concept of humanism alongside liberalism. Interestingly, Christianity founded and promoted the concept of individual freedom and personal empowerment; what is now assimilated in the new spiritualities as “the self.” Niethammer was a German Lutheran theologian. “The European Byzantine, late medieval and early modern European humanisms were certainly profoundly religious.” 8
“The Self ” has become, since then, the decisive point of various human endeavors, from philosophy to psychology, up to the religious life. Hence, New Age spirituality is sometimes called the “self-spirituality.” The individual has the power to decide what he or she wants to believe, worship, or accept as true. He or she construes his spirituality the way he or she wants it, decides what is good or bad or that everything is neutral, and has no recourse to any external judgmental “God.” He or she is the subject, the “god,” and the spirit(s), energy, universe are the objects. “There is reciprocal dependence of the existence of the ‘Self,’ the ‘God’ and the ‘World’ … The universal Self is God … The Self is at the centre of everything.” 9 The extrication from outward, dogmatic structures, the freedom and the elevation of “the self” above other phenomena was a diverging force from religiosity and a creating force of spirituality. What could be more attractive, more adequate to this self-empowerment and freedom, than such a body–spirit constellation?
Nature
After the self, the next most important factor for “spirituality” is nature. This extends from the astronomical realities in the universe or multiverse above to the oceans and forests around us on earth. For SBNR members, nature is sacred and spiritual. They relate with awe and even reverence to the wonder of nature, of the universe and the creative forces of life. So for them, “religious and spiritual organizations should re-affirm the importance of the stewardship of nature as a core component of human spirituality.” 10 The belief is that there is spiritual energy connecting every natural thing; that creation and creator is one and the same.
This sense of oneness in nature equally extends into the medical-healing aspect of life. Some medical experts are of the opinion that it was not until the mid-twentieth century that traditional Chinese medicine was stripped of its spiritual origins. They claim that such Eastern systems of medicine have been widely adopted with their nonreligious components (acupuncture, herbs, Tai Chi, and qigong). 11 However, C.G. Brown has revealed in an interview that her research on complementary and alternative medicine and the ways Christian America has appropriated it suggests that these components are not “nonreligious” in the long run. With the so-called alternative medicines, holistic medicine, natural medicine, naturopathic medicine, homeopathic medicine, many Westerners are introduced to other forms of healing that are not of the Western scientific paradigm. They become involved in these processes of healing, practicing yoga and different forms of meditations for their well-being. Their intent is probably a recommended alternative from the ineffective medicine they have been using for their healing. But soon, they would realize that with constant and active participation, even one’s intent can change. 12 Gradually, consciously or unconsciously, they are involved with the spiritualities that use such practices to bond with nature or transcend into the spirit world.
But it was not necessarily a need to wonder about the universe or benefit from natural medicine that brought nature into the three-point picture of the new spiritualities. It was the necessity of having a point of contact with the divine, apart from the contact forms in the established religions. Pittman argues regarding Wiccans, for example, that religion no longer fits into the modern equation. It must therefore be replaced by a nature-based spirituality. This form of spirituality can be achieved without the intercession of institutionalized religions. 13 For the spirituality to be new, the old needs to be expunged from its system. This includes the old forms of spiritual contact. Some SBNR members do not claim to be atheistic or even agnostic. This is why they sometimes get more offensive criticisms from those who consider themselves atheists than from religious believers. Being spiritual but not religious makes it easier for them to navigate the challenges of Christian religious identity, for example, and at the same time indulge in experiences that are “spiritual.”
But such experiences cannot be divulged of the body, of nature. New Age spirituality, for instance, is sometimes called “mind–body–spirit.” God is conceived as an impersonal energy, a universal force, present in all things. This new impersonal idea of God, the Divine, the Spirit, or whatever name one chooses, is impersonal and difficult to comprehend or even approach. But the physical objects, outstanding phenomena like oceans, big-old trees, and so on become opportunities to revere and relate to this impersonal, distant “Force.”
This sense of the sacredness of nature and the deification of the self is spurred by the willingness to discard the religious concept of God.
Divinity
The need for spiritual well-being and inner peace constitutes the third point of divergence between religion and spiritualities. In Christianity, for example, there is a very big difference in the mode and content of its message less than a century ago and the average mode of its message today. A reference to the preaching of the 1930s up to the 1960s would surprise one at the immensity of the change in the content of the Christian message. While these days, only the disliked few preach about commandments and responsibility, sin and repentance, judgement and condemnation, these were normal religious topics in Christianity up until 40–50 years ago.
In a sense, this former mode of Christianity contributed to religious reductionism in Christianity. Since faith, repentance, and good works are prerequisites for a salvific human–divine relationship with the personalized God in Jesus Christ, Christians concentrated more on a stiff structured rhythm of religious life: bonum faciendum et malum vitandum. 14 But even more, Christians measured their religiosity only by these categories of faith, repentance, and good works. As such, they expressed this religiosity in their religious observances, prayers, church attendance, and corporal works of mercy. As good as these structures were, it gave the impression that Christianity is not accommodating and inclusive, discordant to the nature of man who always yearns for new things. As such, it became difficult for people who could no longer pray or attend church services to consider themselves as Christians.
When inter-territorial contacts became easier through migration and globalization, academic and cultural exposures became normalities. People began to experience the religious other, and discovered the various forms of human–divine relationships where they would not be confronted by teachings and commandments, by the guilt of sin and expectation of repentance; where they just had to unblock the impersonal energy and decide their own spiritual rhythm. They accepted the comfortable change.
Hence, spirituality became a new mode of human–divine relation without the intricacies of the mainstream religions. 15
Implications of the Divergence for Christianity
Ironically, one result of the Protestant Reformation was a solidification of ecclesiocentric theology. 16 In the Council of Trent, the Roman Catholic Church counteracted Protestantism with even deeper theological explanations that sustained traditionalism and ecclesiocentric Christianity. However, theologies from the nineteenth-century Christian background initiated a Copernican change in the order of its message. It started moving away from ecclesiocentrism to christocentrism. Dominated by German thinkers, this shift was promoted by Friedrich Schleiermacher, Albert Ritschl, Wilhelm Herrmann, and so forth. Then it battled to retain christocentrism against liberalistic influence up until the mid-twentieth century, with the help of evangelicalism and Christian fundamentalism. Karl Barth, Rudolf Bultmann, and Emil Brunner represented this fight. 17 Then there was the next shift from christocentrism to egalitarianism. This contemporary stage emphasizes equality; gender equality, religious equality, racial equality, and so forth. Dialogue became the viable accepted mode of relationship that would ensure communication on an equal basis. So, theology of religions with interreligious dialogue is the twenty-first century face of theology. 18 In this century, it is a matter of debate as to whether Christian theology still retains Christ as a conditio sine qua non in its various departments. Since the emphasis was no longer on Jesus Christ, religions, religiosities, and spiritualities that are not Christian-orientated could better flourish in the former Christendom.
The point is that throughout the periods of Christianity up until the present egalitarianism, the three cardinal points of the new spiritualities were not estranged in Christian theologies.
Theological Anthropology
If we consider “the self,” for example, Buddhism principally teaches that the idea of a “self” is a delusion; that there is no “myself,” rather a “not-self.” It is called “Anatta.” It teaches “the not-Self doctrine in order to overcome the egoistic Self which is the basis for attachment and grasping.” 19 This teaching basically argues against an unchanging, eternal soul and personalized identity. Each individual has only an ever-changing, moment-to-moment of living that create a sense of self-identity. So, there is no permanent individualized concept of the self, identifiable in a human person, and responsible for deeds and misdeeds in an eternal realm.
However, Christian theology has always taught differently in its anthropological theology. It teaches that the very essence of Christianity, God being human, is the elevation of man up to godliness. Christian anthropology teaches three major points. (1) The dual nature of the human as both essentially mortal and at the same time capable of transcending mortality. Early Church Fathers like Gregory of Nyssa, Athanasius, Tertullian, and Augustine all taught this dual human nature. Where they differed was whether this impermanent and yet incorruptible human nature is dichotomized (body and soul) or trichotomized (body, soul, and spirit); a topic for another time. (2) Humans are essentially good. This Christian humanism argues that humans were created good (Gen 1:31), and this goodness is elevated in Jesus Christ who was like us in all things but sin (Heb 2:17). Sin, evil, is not an authentic original nature of humans, but rather is the perversion or absence of the good; for Augustine, the abuse or misuse of the good free will. (3) Christian anthropology teaches that human existence is corrupted and fallen. This is the teaching of original sin; that humans, though good, are born with the capacity to sin and live estranged from a perfect imago Dei. Against the British Monk Pelagius, who taught that humans, if they will, can live perfectly without needing the grace of forgiveness and reconciliation, Augustine argues that that was possible before the fall, posse non peccare (possible not to sin). But after the fall, the human nature became non posse non peccare (not possible not to sin), needing the constant grace of God’s forgiveness. 20
Up to modern times, theologians have supported the dignity of the human person, basing their teachings on Scripture and the Magisterium. In the Roman Catholic Church, for example, the principle of human dignity has been fundamental to the social teachings of the Church starting from Rerum Novarum (1891) to Laudato si (2015). Also, modern theologians addressed the necessity of self-realization and even self-transcendence. Bernard Lonergan proposes that human beings achieve authenticity in transcending the self. 21 Karl Rahner contributed with his transcendental freedom, claiming that human beings have the ability to reach beyond finiteness and experience themselves as transcendent. 22 But all these Christian theologies of the human person were not enough to deter the appropriation of “the self” and “spirituality” into a different usage, contrary to and competitive with Christianity.
On Natural Theology
It is the same story with nature. From Thomas Aquinas to William Paley, theologians have tried to reconcile and validate the authenticity of belief in God through pure association of the created nature. While it denies pantheism, Christian theology argues for “natural theology,” that one can come to knowledge of and union with God through reasoning and experiencing the wonders of his creation. 23 But there was not an emphatic progress of this natural theology. “People held nature sacred to varying degrees, especially trees, as the writings of the many religions attest. In our increasingly materially driven world, the separation between religion, spirituality and our environment widens. Now people need to reconnect to the natural world.” 24
The same thing is applicable to the case of monastic natural medicine. Europe was besieged by a series of diseases in the early Middle Ages, and deaths were rampant. It was the educated monks of the time that battled the menace of the plagues and succored the people. Hence, there was monastic medicine. Without the emphasis on financial profit, the monks studied natural elements and applied them to heal people’s minds, bodies, and souls, unperturbed by death through infection since they were doing God’s work. Till today, elements of this monastic natural medicine can still be referred to. The natural medicine of Hildegard von Bingen is one example. When modern scientific medicine started developing, it “departed from the spiritual component of its more ancient predecessors primarily as a result of conflicts between science and religion.” 25 So, natural medicine was relegated, and with it, the religious tendency of healing body, mind, and soul. This natural medicine that was practiced by the monks was neither promoted by Christian institutions nor theologically sustained. Even the medicine of Hildegard von Bingen does not survive because of the support of the church, but because of the peculiar tendency of Germans to adhere to their traditions and cultures. Yet again, the opportunity of Christian natural medicine was lost and the needs of the body for alternative medicines were estranged from Christianity.
Spiritual Theology
Spiritual theology used to be topical in theological studies. The various spiritualities and how to harness them was of pastoral importance, providing the faithful with numerous spiritual ways to sustain their religiosity, according to the style that is suitable for each person. In many other parts of the world, this opportunity is still there. There are many pious societies and religious groups within the Catholic Church, for example. In a family, it is normal for the father to belong to Charismatic spirituality, the mother to a Theresian prayer group, the daughter to a Marian spirituality, and so on. But in the absence of these spiritualities in the Western churches, and the human need for spiritualities still persisting, it is not surprising that alternative spiritualities are invoked.
Meditations are now essential parts of these new spiritualities, so much appropriated that it would appear to be a strange concept in Christian spirituality. But mediation has been part of Christian spirituality since the fourth century with the desert fathers. The monastic periods heightened its usage, sustaining it by providing the benefits of mind–body–soul serenity. It was equally supported theologically through the emphasis on silent prayer to the God who prefers a silent prayer to the Pharisaic style of prayer (Matt 6:4–6), the God who speaks to us and whom we can only hear when we listen (1 Sam 3:9–10). There was even an eschatological aspect to it. Since the people at that time had 70 years at most to live, they were encouraged to prepare themselves for their eternity. Prayer was the major way of preparation.
So, meditation was upheld in Christendom, until modernization and the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century happened, which preferred spending time in salary works to silent long hours of contemplation. There was then neither the time nor the quietude to spend before the Blessed Sacrament in meditation. And again, this spirituality gradually faded away. After two centuries now, people want to run away from the noise and stress of work into solitude. They want to relieve tensions and transcend to a place of inner peace. But they can hardly find such provisions again in Christianity. Modernization suffocated it. In monasteries and prayer houses where such possibilities still exist, many do not know what is done there, or what they provide. And they could not have known. They have been estranged from churches for ages and monasteries sound obsolete. If there was any face of Christianity still known to them, it is the tele-evangelical Christianity which is not exactly calm, serene, and meditative.
But when the modern spiritualities emerged, exposed and provided to the Westerners as modern, they embraced them. They saw in meditation what they have missed in their lives, what their estrangement from Christianity has denied them. In fact, contemplative spirituality was an identity of Roman Catholicism and a decisive point of separation for Protestantism. Catholicism was considered other-worldly while Protestantism was this-worldly. Ironically, Max Weber argues that Roman Catholicism is nearer to the Eastern religions like Hinduism and Buddhism than it is to Protestantism, based on this point. 26 So, Christianity had the provisions for meditative needs. But here too, change in theological priorities undermined this Christian property and enabled the success of new spiritualities.
Theology developed into interreligious concerns and religious egalitarianism and the three cardinal points were no longer considered theological priorities. So, this work argues that though many factors, like inter-territorial migration, globalization, the media, and so on, contributed to the reemergence of the immanentist new spiritualities, it was mainly theological negligence that caused the influx of many Christians into these spiritualities, and the separation of spirituality from religiosity. There is, therefore, a need for a reassessment of the priorities of Christian theology.
Conclusion
The new spiritualities from different parts of the world are mostly accepted, adhered to, and sometimes, practiced in adulterated forms. Whether they are of African ancestral traditions or of the Eastern side, the influx of these spiritualities in the Western world is not the cause of the decline of Christianity, but its result. 27 So, how does Christianity respond to this development?
Defensive Response
On the one hand, there is the expected defensive reaction that considers these spiritualities as competitors and their practices as threats to Christianity. This must not be surprising, and to an extent, it is justifiable. For example, the expression “institutional religion” is one of the incessant expressions of the new spiritualities used to label religions into one single box of authoritative, power-mongering, politically structured entities, planned and instituted to manipulate and entrap the masses in doctrines and fears. Very often, people dismiss talk of religions or justify their willingness not to be religious as response to this concept of “institutional religion,” suggesting that these religions have no provisions for either a good ethical and moral life or human–divine relationship. 28 In its extension, these “institutional religions” (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) and their concepts of God are considered wrong and deceptive. Hence, SBNR members can yearn for spiritual experiences as long as it does not lead to Jesus Christ as God. They can pray, but not to the God of “institutional religions,” rather to the “divine” in the moon, sun, and ocean. They can believe, not having faith in a personal God, but rather a belief in an impersonal and distant spirit that does not imply commitment. They can meditate, but it would be in the Buddhistic concept of mindfulness, of awareness of oneself and the phenomena around, but not meditating with and in Jesus Christ as prayer to him.
This could be a major influence from the Buddhistic teaching on mindfulness. “Mindfulness was taught by the Buddha as a core aspect of the path to awakening and as a competency to be developed and practiced throughout the lifespan of the spiritual journey. The Buddha described mindfulness as the spiritual process of being fully aware of that which is, as opposed to that which was or that which might be.” 29 It is of utmost important to unlocking the Buddhistic three marks of existence; impermanence, suffering, and insight. It is a practice of awareness of one’s body, feelings, and the world around. It is basically the normal conscious attention to one’s body and mind, but then “spiritualized” through yoga positions and such meditative processes.
Hence it is easier for a new spiritualist to consider his or her awe at trees, oceans, and skies as spiritual. The questions arise. Is it the natural phenomena that are spiritual or the way SBNR members feel when they consider them? Is God, the revealed God of any of the institutional religions, completely uninvolved in these spiritual experiences?
Many criticisms of the new spiritualities result from this “institutional religions” negative labeling, and the efforts to negate the personal, different from nature, concepts of God in the religions.
In another example, we have nowadays various teachings that refer to Jesus the mystic. In their conviction, Jesus Christ typified the experience of an elevated state of consciousness. He knew God, claimed oneness with him, and proposed it as a model of oneness for humanity (John 17). So, Jesus was a mystic, who must have used those numerous times of long and lonely prayers up on the hills (Matt 14:23) to develop his yogic experiences, mastering his body energies, psychic intuitions, healing, and visions. So he was able to achieve oneness with God. 30 There is equally now the Jesuan spirituality. It is a spirituality oriented to the person of Jesus. Similar to mysticism, this spirituality considers the historical Jesus separate from the Christ and savior who said that he will come again. In his teaching of oneness, he showed people that they can be one with God. He is, as such, a spiritual teacher, like Buddha or Lao Tzu. It is, however, exactly this point that Christianity sees a need to counteract. If that simple factor is denied, namely that the historical Jesus is primarily the Christ, the Logos, one with God, the savior of humankind, then Christianity loses its central teaching. Whether Jesus Christ is understood as a mystic or spiritual teacher poses little or no threat to Christianity as long as the soteriological humanity–divinity indivisibility in him remains intact.
Christianity, therefore, approaches critically the new spiritualities based on these threats. My interest, however, is not to dwell on the many criticisms of the new spiritualities. If anything, it is to critically address the incapacities of Christianity with regard to the new spiritualities.
Constructive Response
On the other hand, the reemergence of the immanentist spiritualities is a positive challenge to Christianity to readdress itself in the light of the theological deficiencies above. It is equally an opportunity to enrich and be enriched through contact with other religions and spiritualities. Many nineteenth-century thinkers predicted the decadence of religion with the rise of modernization and industrialization. They were not completely wrong. From Auguste Comte to Max Weber and Sigmund Freud, their claims were based on systematic analysis of social structures from Christian backgrounds. Indeed, Christianity witnessed a major decline from the nineteenth century to date, especially in the Western world. Surprisingly, religion and its phenomena proved to be beyond human logic and analysis. Human beings never stopped longing for that life, that experience, that God, who is the final point of everything. The new spiritualities from the Eastern world and African ancestral traditions are gaining attention and adherents. Islam is on a rapid increase worldwide. Even the presumed dying Christianity is rising vigorously worldwide, in different new forms. Evangelical churches are springing up here and there in African and Latin American countries. If anything, the world is getting more religious and spiritual, and the relevance of religion is now more often than not related to both politics and economy.
The New Spirituality is an opportunity for proposition and Christian encounters. After all, what is the Christian mandate besides presenting Christ to the world like John the Baptist? “The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, “After me comes a man who ranks before me, for he was before me” (John 1:29–30). It is exactly this that needs a strong will, a courage that is not so much fancied nowadays. It is this courage that would see the positive provisions in the new spiritualities, and seek for an enrichment of Christianity from them.
Footnotes
1
Cf. Robert C. Fuller, Spiritual, but Not Religious: Understanding Unchurched America (New York: Oxford University, 2001), 11.
2
3
Steven Wayne Gehring, Religion and Spirituality in Late 20th Century Music (Michigan: ProQuest, 2011), iii.
4
George A. Lane, Christian Spirituality (Chicago: Loyola, 2004), vii.
5
Zulfiqar Ali Shah, Anthropomorphic Depictions of God: The Concept of God in Judaic, Christian and Islamic Traditions (London: International Institute of Islamic Thought, 2012), 190.
6
Gordon Lynch, The New Spirituality: An Introduction to Progressive Belief in the Twenty First Century (London: I.B.Tauris, 2007), 11.
7
Randy Thornhill and Corey L. Fincher, The Parasite-Stress Theory of Values and Sociality: Infectious Disease, History and Human Values Worldwide (Cham: Springer, 2014), 295.
8
Mihai-D Grigore, “Humanism and its Humanitas,” Humanity: A History of European Concepts in Practice from the Sixteenth Century to the Present, ed. Fabian Klose and Mirjam Thulin (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016), 77.
9
T.N. Dhar, On the Path of Spirituality (New Delhi: Mittal, 2006), 136.
10
Edmund G.C. Barrow, “Falling between the ‘Cracks’ of Conservation and Religion,” Sacred Natural Sites: Conserving Nature and Culture, ed. Bas Verschuuren, Jeffrey McNeely, Gonzalo Oviedo, and Robert Wild (New York: Earthscan, 2010), 42.
11
Cf. Margaret L. Stuber and Brandon Horn, “Complementary, Alternative and Integrative Medicine,” Oxford Textbook of Spirituality in Healthcare, ed. Mark Cobb, Christina M Puchalski, and Bruce Rumbold (New York: Oxford, 2012), 191–96 (191).
12
13
Nancy Chandler Pittman, Christian Wicca: The Trinitarian Tradition (Indiana: Author House, 2003), 2.
14
“Good is to be done, evil is to be avoided.”
15
Lynch, The New Spirituality, 11.
16
V.K. Rao, History of Education (New Delhi: A.P.H., 2008), 260.
17
Cf. Owen F. Cummings, Coming to Christ: A Study in Christian Eschatology (New York: University Press of America, 1998).
18
Cf. Eugene F. Gorski, Theology of Religions: A Sourcebook for Interreligious Study (New York: Paulist, 2008), v.
19
Paul Williams, Mahayana Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations (Oxon.: Routledge, 2009), 101.
20
Cf. Roger E. Olson, The Mosaic of Christian Belief: Twenty Centuries of Unity & Diversity (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2016), 201–11.
21
Jennifer Slater, OP, The Theological Anthropology of Self-Realization: The Humanization of Women and Consecrated Life (Indiana: Author House, 2011), 111.
22
Ibid., 113.
23
Cf. Wayne Hankey, “Natural Theology in the Patristic Period,” The Oxford Handbook of Natural Theology, ed. Russell Re Manning, John Hedley Brooke, and Fraser Watts (Oxford: Oxford University, 2013), 51–53.
24
Barrow, “Falling between the ‘Cracks’ of Conservation and Religion,” 42.
25
Stuber and Horn, “Complementary, Alternative and Integrative Medicine,” 191.
26
Cf. Andreas Sofroniou, Concepts of Social Scientists and Great Thinkers (North Carolina: Lulu, 2013), 678.
27
Cf. David W. Buschart and Kent Eilers, Theology as Retrieval: Receiving the Past, Renewing the Church (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2015), 159.
28
Renita Yuk-Lin Wong and Jana Vinsky, “Speaking from the Margins: A Critical Reflection on the ‘Spiritual-but-not-Religious’ Discourse in Social Work,” British Journal of Social Work 39 (2009): 1343–59 (1349).
29
Edo Shonin,William Van Gordon, and Nirbhay N. Singh, “Mindfulness and Buddhist Practice,” Buddhist Foundations of Mindfulness, ed. Edo Shonin, William Van Gordon, and Nirbhay N. Singh, (Cham: Springer, 2015), 2.
30
Peggy Wilkinson, OCDS, Finding the Mystic within You (Washington, D.C.: ICS, 2015), 34.