Religion, spirituality, worldviews, and discourses: revisiting the term “spirituality” as opposed to “religion”

Abstract

In the last few decades, the usage of the term “spirituality” has plummeted in an unprecedented way and has significantly contributed to the question what “religion” is and is not. The notion that the word “spirituality” is an emic term, closely tied to the postmodern situation and specifically the New Age scene, is occasionally referred to by scholars, mainly by Steven Sutcliffe. However, the consequences of this remain largely unexplored. This article shows the term has been largely accepted by the scholarly community, with all its implicit emic baggage, and discusses various aporia and questionable results that emerge from its uncritical usage. Consequently, from the traditional perspective, the term should be treated as emic. At the same time, however, the term should be subject to rigorous discursive analysis to uncover all of its implications, contexts, and implicit relationships of power.