Religion, Culture & ‘Unchurched’ Spirituality

Today’s lecture was an interesting one because we were exploring the idea of spirituality, and how it was different from religion. Spirituality is outside of the church, it arose when the idea of secularization began to infiltrate many countries. When I was doing my independent study, I looked deeper into de-Christianisation (where Christian influences are removed from something). I found it interesting to find out that it was first happened during a French Revolution. It was where the people went against the priests and ministers as they were seen to be a part of the new government, and they massacred many of them, others fled to other countries to get away. This saw the closure of many churches within France, many of which never reopened. This caused many French people to abandon their faith, many of whom never got it back, resulting in France becoming a more secular county instead of a predominantly Christian one. I also found it interesting to look at the census during the lecture, as it said that 11% of people considered their religion to be Jedi Knight.

However, I found it confusing when we went to the tutorial, I found it challenging figuring out how to incorporate a theorist into the question we had to answer. I believe once I revise this topic that it will make more sense to me and then I can start to relate the knowledge I have learned to that of a theorist.

It has been interesting learning about religion and unchurched spirituality as they have an impact on our society. Popular religions are decreasing in size whereas spiritual groups are increasing. Spirituality, in our modern society, is seen as a form of religion that exists outside the normal religious institutions. In our society, religion is happening outside of the standard ‘churches’ and instead people are turning to spirituality. This does not mean that religion is disappearing, it’s just branching out into different aspects which suit the needs of our modern people.