A New-Old Spirituality: How Spirituality has Softened and Revitalized Religion

Abstract This article seeks to continue the unfolding of the tangled relationship of spirituality and religion but from the vantage point of Christianity (religion), and more specifically, from Christian practice and from the perspective of representatives of institutionalized religion (clergy) and rather unchurched participants in organized religious practice. While first-wave scholars argued that religion and spirituality are at odds with each other, second-wave scholars rather consider the relationship between the two more blurred and hybrid. Following the lead of this latter group of scholarship, I make the case that contemporary spirituality at the intersection of “individualized spirituality” and “institutionalized religion” can be understood as a new-old spirituality and that religion is being changed by spirituality. This entails that people are approaching old Christian practices in new ways and new places often urged by a new kind of motivation. By attending to issues of subjectivity and regarding experience as a significant source of authority without leaving the theistic framework of religion altogether, this new-old spirituality is available and attractive to constituencies as varied as clergy, children, incarcerated, and young people. Hence, it can be argued that religion is not only giving way to spirituality. Religion is also softened and revitalized by spirituality, as empirical studies in the Scandinavian countries show a resurgence and revitalization of religious practice, both inside and at the margins of institutionalized religion, and, thus, a sacralization of the congregational domain.