Contemporary Spiritualities: Social and Religious Contexts

Description

Spirituality can be understood within both a religious and secular context. Fuelled by the controversy that surrounds different understandings of human identity and notions of progress, knowledge and truth in modernist and postmodernist contexts, the concept of spirituality is a hotly contested topic of debate as to its relevance within contemporary culture and its meaning within religious traditions. This book aims to inform readers on this debate and contextualize it within these different frames of reference. It approaches the topic of spirituality with an identification of the major influences on contemporary thinking and presents a coherent framework of understanding that links divergent thinking into a common goal. Writings range across different thinkers and practitioners within established religious tradition, contemporary movements and those who operate within psychological and 'secular' understandings. Focusing on the question 'what does it mean to be human?' this engaging study attempts to overcome the divide between secular and religious understandings of spirituality.

Clive Erricker is Reader in the Study of Religions, University College Chichester, UK. Jane Erricker is lecturer at King Alfred's University College, Winchester.

"The volume [...] demonstrates that the spiritual is essential to understanding human behaviour . . . It also opens a chink in the curtain between the canonically religious and the implicitly spiritual. The Religious Studies of the last two centuries may prove to have been the preparation for the investigation of such secularity." --Journal of Contemporary Religion 17.2 (2002) "The book is readable and coherent." --Theological Book Review Feed the Minds "There is a lot of useful material here: readers looking for an introduction to Taize, the Society for Krishna Consciousness, the Amish, or figures such as Merton, Griffiths or the Dalai Lama, will find this book helpful. The second half of the book also stimulates to reflection on how to live a communal faith within post-modern culture. May of the issues it raises are vital ones: feminism, the nature of spiritual experience, how faith communities work, inter-faith relations, and the connection between prayer and social justice." --David Keen, Yeovil ANVIL 19.3, 2002 "Contemporary Spiritualities is a welcome addition to the body of knowledge concerning the diversity of communities that organise both individual and communal life founded around the centrality of the sacred....the volume offers a wide range of religious and spiritual experience encompassing both individuals and communities...There is plenty to ponder in this volume..." -- International Journal of Children's Spirituality, 2002