Spiritual complexity in Australia: Wellbeing and risks

Abstract

The turn of the twenty-first century was characterised by ‘spiritual revolution’, with claims that interest in New Age spirituality was eclipsing religion and would continue to do so in the future. Since then, scholars of religion have been more focused on religious diversity and the rise of the non-religious. While interest in spirituality, uptake of spiritual practices, and identification as ‘spiritual but not religious’ have continued to grow, spirituality is typically not taken as seriously as religion, at least in political spheres or by academia. This article examines the history and contemporary dynamics of spiritual complexity in Australia, drawing on the findings of two Australian Research Council–funded studies ‘The Worldviews of Australia’s Generation Z’ and ‘Religious Diversity in Australia’ and on a recent project ‘(Con)spirituality, Science and COVID-19 in Australia’. It argues that it is certainly time for spirituality to be taken more seriously in this country and globally, given spirituality’s concern with personal and planetary wellbeing, and also the potential risks spirituality can pose due to its association with dis/misinformation, neoliberalism, and violence.

Introduction

Around two decades ago, scholarship on the ‘spiritual revolution’ and the ‘spiritual marketplace’ flourished, with researchers charting the rise of the New Age and holistic spirituality (Carrette and King, 2005; Heelas and Woodhead, 2005; Roof, 1999; Tacey, 2000, 2004; Wuthnow, 1998). While some argued that spirituality would eclipse religion in the twenty-first century, the events of 11 September 2001 very much returned religion to the public sphere (Habermas, 2006). Post 9/11, a substantial amount of scholarly attention has been dedicated to the study of religious diversity and the securitisation of religion, focused mainly on Abrahamic traditions (Beaman, 2017; Bouma and Halafoff, 2017; Gearon, 2012; Kühle et al., 2018). Significant scholarly attention has also been directed to the rise of the religious ‘nones’, given growing numbers of people declaring to have ‘no religion’, particularly in Western societies (Beaman and Stacy, 2021; Cox and Possamai, 2019; Lee, 2015).

Throughout these past two decades, a growing sub-field of scholars have continued studying the mainstreaming of spirituality and its relationship with religion. This global engagement with spirituality has been accelerated by social media and also due to an interest in alternative frameworks for personal and planetary health and wellbeing. This process has accelerated in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the acute climate change crisis (Halafoff, 2021; Halafoff et al., 2020a; Palmisano and Pannofino, 2021). Among these scholars, Anna Fedele and Kim E. Knibbe (2020) argue that research on spirituality has been taken less seriously in scholarly and political spheres than studies of religious diversity and non-religion. They call for contemporary studies of religion to move beyond a binary focus on religion and the secular, towards a triangular focus on religion, the secular/non-religion, ¹ and spirituality, and to take spirituality more seriously. They further explain that a reluctance to do so stems in large part from the pervasive and increasingly discredited view that spirituality is private and individual, and that it is predominantly practised by women.

We have also observed that spirituality receives less attention in scholarship and in policy and curricula than religion does in Australia, and we are currently addressing this lacuna. This article examines the current contours of spirituality in Australia, heeding Fedele and Knibbe’s (2020) call to present complex and nuanced assessments of spirituality in local, diverse contexts. Stefania Palmisano and Nicola Pannofino (2021: 4, 157) similarly argue that while there are common traits, lexicons, and practices within contemporary global spirituality, there are ‘multiple spiritualities’ that are shaped by local particularities and notably the religious culture of diverse societies.

Furthermore, spirituality, like religion, is a contested term. Fedele and Knibbe (2020: 6) define ‘holistic spirituality’ – equated with alternative New Age spirituality and the ‘spiritual but not religious’ (SBNR) – as being distinct from ‘institutionalized religion’. They differentiate this holistic spirituality from a broader ‘contemporary spirituality’, which also encompasses religious forms, and is thereby not simply a sub-category of non-religion.

Given the long history of indigenous spirituality in Australia, we have expanded Fedele and Knibbe’s (2020) typology to include ‘First Nations spirituality’, as practised and lived by Australia’s First Nations peoples. We use the term holistic spirituality in the same way that Fedele and Knibbe do, but refer to ‘religious spirituality’, instead of contemporary spirituality, as many religious traditions have long been present in Australia since the mid-late nineteenth century and have had a significant impact on spirituality in this country. This article thereby examines First Nations spirituality, religious spirituality, and holistic spirituality in Australia, historically and within contemporary society.

Our discussion begins with an overview of international literature and theories pertaining to spirituality, focusing on those most relevant to our Australian context. It then revisits insights on spirituality in Australia from earlier publications by David Tacey (2000) and Gary D. Bouma (2006), and First Nations scholars Vicki Grieves (2009) and Tyson Yunkaporta (2019) before examining the findings of three contemporary Australian studies conducted by authors of this paper: the Worldviews of Australia’s Generation Z (AGZ) ² (Singleton et al., 2021); Religious Diversity in Australia (RDA) ³ (Halafoff et al., 2021); and (Con)spirituality, Science and COVID-19 in Australia (CSCA) (Halafoff et al., 2022b). ⁴ These studies comprised quantitative and qualitative data, from both the general population and those with a specific interest in different kinds of spiritual expression. In addition, we draw on a media content analysis, within the RDA study, which examined the way spirituality is represented by the Australian press.

Our findings about Australia concur with and also extend Fedele and Knibbe’s (2020) arguments in several ways, discussed in detail below. We also stress the need for more research to better understand what we call – drawing on Inger Furseth’s (2018) theory of religious complexity – a spiritual complexity within contemporary societies in and beyond Australia, which has personal, social, and planetary dimensions and is ambivalently associated with wellbeing and risks (Halafoff et al., 2022b). This research has both theoretical and applied dimensions, given it can contribute to informing policies, practices, and curricula pertaining to spirituality, and spiritual wellbeing, that are receiving increased attention yet have, up until now, been under-researched and under-valued in and beyond Australia.

The spiritual revolution?

Building on Paul Heelas’s (1996) earlier work on the New Age Movement and ‘self-spirituality’, Heelas and Linda Woodhead (2005: 1) famously argued in The Spiritual Revolution that a spiritual lexicon, focused on holistic practices of yoga, the New Age, and mind–body–spirit connection, was becoming more common in popular culture than the ‘traditional Christian vocabulary’. The New Age’s focus on self-actualisation, its critique of modernity and industrialisation, and a parallel interest in Indigenous and Asian traditions were not, however, entirely new. They arose in much earlier movements such as Romanticism, Western esotericism, and Theosophy, but certainly intensified in the late 1960s due to increased migration and travel (Gauthier, 2020; Heelas and Woodhead, 2005; Palmisano and Pannofino, 2021; Watts, 2022).

Heelas and Woodhead (2005) set out to test ‘the spiritual revolution claim’, which argued that ‘religion – namely Christianity’ was being ‘eclipsed by spirituality’ (Campbell, 1999; Luckmann, 1967, cited in Heelas and Woodhead, 2005: 2). Drawing on Charles Taylor’s (1991: 26) observation of a ‘massive subjective turn of modern culture’, Heelas and Woodhead (2005: 4–6, 83) described this reorientation as moving away from deferring to ‘higher authority’ and instead having ‘the courage to become your own authority’. They equated religion with outmoded authoritarian, externally transcendent, and duty-focused ways of being and relating, reliant on dogmas and scriptures. Spirituality they said, by contrast, referred to more this-worldly, interior, and authentic experience of the sacred, equated with self-realisation and ‘subjective wellbeing culture’. They argued that religion was bound to decline and spirituality to flourish in late-modern societies. Spirituality’s eclipsing of religion may have been an exaggeration, but there is no doubt a significant shift was occurring at that time, where Christianity had ‘a new competitor in “the spiritual marketplace”’ (Heelas and Woodhead, 2005: 1; Roof, 1999).

Dick Houtman and Stef Aupers (2007), based on their study of late-modern, ‘post-Christian’, New Age spirituality in 14 European countries, labelled this same trend the ‘Spiritual Turn’. Drawing on World Values Survey (WVS) data, they found that post-Christian spirituality certainly became more widespread from 1981 to 2000, particularly among younger cohorts. They correctly predicted that both the non-religious and the SBNRs would increase. They called for more research into ‘the social construction of self-spirituality’ and for further interrogation of the claim that it is ‘purely individualistic’, given the lack of empirical research on these aspects of spirituality at that time (Houtman and Aupers, 2007: 317).

Nancy T. Ammerman’s (2013a, 2013b) North American qualitative research on ‘everyday’ spirituality did just that. Ammerman (2013b: 261) noted that psychologist Kenneth Pargament (2011: 31) problematised the ‘polarization’ of religion and spirituality, with religion typically being viewed as ‘the institutional bad-guy’ and spirituality as ‘the individual good-guy’, arguing this was not backed up by empirical evidence. Ammerman’s (2013b) and earlier studies (Chaves, 2011; Pargament, 2011; Roof, 2003) stressed the similarities between religion and spirituality – such as belief in God/deities or higher powers, and its social dimensions – and the fact that many people are both religious and spiritual, and not always simply religious or SBNR.

Ammerman’s (2013b: 272) study also revealed a strong commitment across the cohorts of her participants to what she called ‘Ethical Spirituality’, where participants were committed to transcending self-centred interests and ‘helping others’. While ‘located in the core of the self’, this spirituality was also deeply social and reflected a sense of awe of the natural world and works of art and beauty (Ammerman, 2013b: 267–270). An emphasis on ‘sacralisation of nature’ is also highlighted in Palmisano and Pannofino’s (2021) study of spirituality in Italy and Paul Bramadat’s (2022) observation of a prevalent ‘reverential naturalism’ in the Cascadian region of Canada and the United States, particularly due to its natural beauty.

Ammerman (2013a: 1–5) also argued that people formed ‘spiritual tribes’, ⁵ with shared spiritual lexicons and aesthetics, that strengthen common bonds. Ammerman (2013b: 276) concluded that ‘binary categories of organized v. individual, religious v. spiritual, theistic and transcendent v. nontheistic and immanent’ were outdated. She also argued that there was a need to take spiritualities, plural, more seriously, in contemporary studies of religion.

A decade later, Galen Watts’s (2022) study of 50 self-identified SBNR Canadian Millennials (born between 1980 and 2000) similarly found an emphasis on self-spirituality, authenticity, and self-realisation among them, with a virtue-centred ethicality. Many of his participants were members of spiritual communities, practicing, for example, yoga and/or meditation together. Like Ammerman, Watts (2022: 86) concludes that ‘self-spirituality is not necessarily at odds with community, but in fact can be institutionalized and therefore serve to engender community’.

These studies query assertions that spirituality is purely individualised or that religion is simply ‘giving way to spirituality’ (Heelas and Woodhead, 2005). Contemporary sociological studies of religion are stressing the lived and embodied (McGuire, 2008), religious complexity (Furseth, 2018), and/or worldview complexity (Bouma et al., 2022) of societies, with spirituality being part of this landscape, alongside religion and non-religion. Interest in spirituality is booming globally, as are some forms of religion, while others are declining, and this complexity is perhaps best explained by examining diverse worldview’s relationship to neoliberalism, the world’s most-prevalent ideology (Gauthier, 2020). Scholars have long examined religion’s and spirituality’s relationship to capitalism, and in more recent years how the burgeoning ‘spiritual marketplace’ (Roof, 1999) can still facilitate a sincere engagement with spirituality for personal, social, and planetary wellbeing (Jain, 2014, 2020; Gauthier, 2020). Further ambivalence has also been revealed in recent studies regarding neoliberal spirituality’s capacity to be both peacebuilding and violent (Appleby, 1999; Halafoff et al., 2022b).

The spiritual marketplace?

François Gauthier (2020) has recently made a strong and convincing argument that the ‘Global-Market’ regime of consumerism and neoliberalism is reconfiguring all social spheres, including religion and spirituality. While Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic (2005 [1920]) stressed rationality, efficiency, and success as fuelling the Spirit of Capitalism, Gauthier (2020) argues, drawing on Colin Campbell (2005 [1987], 2007), that a parallel Romantic and Sentimentalist ethic, based on emotion, style, and self-expression, drove the Spirit of Consumerism. Many studies of spirituality also stress its origins can be found within Romanticism, particularly an emphasis on personal/individual feelings/emotions, experiences, expressions, and authenticity (Bellah et al., 1985; Campbell, 2007; Heelas, 1996; Houtman and Aupers, 2007; Taylor, 2007; Watts, 2020, 2022).

Gauthier explains how by the mid-twentieth century, youth subcultures, including the 1960s counter-culture movement, embraced new music and fashions, through new media, and created communities and alternative lifestyles, which provided meaning, identity, and belonging, that were then further branded and marketised. By the end of the twentieth century, ‘[e]xpressive individualism, along with its ethic of authenticity, was digested by consumer capitalism and infused into the mainstream’, evident in the New Age and wellness industry’s and lifestyle marketing’s emphasis on self-realisation, display, and visibility (Gauthier, 2020: 131; Taylor, 1991). This has been intensified by hyper-mediatisation in the digital era (Gauthier, 2020; Hjarvard, 2008).

Gauthier (2020: 10) claims that the most successful leaders and influencers in contemporary societies are those who ‘are increasingly adopting neoliberal values, discourses, and practices, as well as branding and marketing strategies’. Those who emphasise the experiential values, authenticity, expressive individualism, self-discovery, freedom of choice, immanent transcendence, visibility, belonging/community, and healing; who possess charismatic authority; who are transnational; and who can harness mobility and digital technology are displaying vitality and attracting significant followers. This, according to Gauthier, explains the global popularity of diverse religious and spiritual movements and practices, including Pentecostalism, pilgrimages, neo-paganism, and the spiritual/wellness industry.

At the same time, Gauthier (2020: 147, 151) observes that those who are disenchanted by modernity or excluded from global markets may ‘turn to radical forms of religion’, and/or spirituality or other ideologies, ‘in contestation and out of despair’. This helps to explain the rise of nationalist and extremist movements and charismatic leaders, harking to go back to old, authoritarian ways to make their nations pure and ‘great again’. Gauthier’s insightful point is that, whether these movements are aligned with and/or contest neoliberalism, are peacebuilding and/or violent, they are still primarily responding to and being shaped by the global, neoliberal Market.

Earlier scholarly critiques also presented contemporary spirituality as intimately tied to capitalism and neoliberalism in ‘ambivalent’ (Appleby, 1999) ways (Carrette and King, 2005). More recently, Andrea Jain’s (2014, 2020) research on ‘neoliberal spirituality’ describes how the ‘tradition of Protestant-capitalist self-improvement’ evident in the wellness movement is founded on cultural appropriation, orientalism, colonial histories, and capitalist exploitation, centred on an ‘envied lifestyle of balance, wellness, success, freedom, and self-care’ (Jain, 2020: 1–2, 5). At the same time, Jain (2020: 1–2) stresses the ambivalence of spirituality stating that yoga and spirituality cannot simply ‘be reduced to products of the forces and relations of capitalist production’. Yoga can be practised seriously and sincerely, even when it has been appropriated and commodified, through ‘demarcating sacred spaces and time, creating communities, posing solutions to the problems of suffering, illness and death, and sharing myths and rituals’ (Jain, 2014, 2020: 52).

As Gauthier (2020: 179) also notes, the centrality of consumerism in many contemporary spiritual and wellbeing practices and movements ‘does not appear’, any longer, as legitimate ‘grounds for their dismissal nor evidences of their inauthenticity’. For example, and similarly to Jain’s, Ammerman’s, and Watt’s arguments, Anna Clot-Garrelle and Mar Griera’s (2019) research on spirituality in Spain reveals that despite ‘claims that holistic spiritualities are necessarily commodified and marketized’ (or we add here that even when this is the case), spiritual adherents ‘anchor their actions through both an ethics of responsibility and an ethics of reciprocity’ with ‘a clear collective dimension’ that ‘is nevertheless articulated through individualized forms of commitment and expression’.

Furthermore, in contrast to the often universalising depictions of spirituality, Jain (2020: 2) describes spiritual communities as ‘fraught with divergence and debate’. While spiritual communities are commonly thought to be socially progressive, she argues that they can display ‘conservative, moralizing and nationalist agendas’, as evidenced by the conservative, Islamophobic, and homophobic, nationalistic Hindutva movement’s, and Indian President Narendra Modi’s and guru Baba Ramdev’s, promotion of yoga, Ayurvedic medicine, and ‘spiritual tourism’ (Jain, 2020).

The perception of spirituality as benign has also been eroded in recent years, with rising concerns regarding issues of racial, gender, and sexual inequality and sexual abuse in spiritual communities, cultural appropriation, and the use of spiritual and pagan symbols in Far-Right and nationalist doctrines of racial purity (Black, 2020a, 2020b; Fedele and Knibbe, 2012, 2020; Godrej, 2017; Jain, 2020; Newcombe and O’Brien-Kop, 2021). Moreover, the intensification of ‘conspirituality’ (Ward and Voas, 2011) – the nexus between spiritual beliefs and conspiracy theories – during the COVID-19 crisis and the rise of dis/misinformation, vaccine refusal, and radicalisation in spiritual communities are challenging spirituality’s ‘peace, love and mung beans’ stereotype and further highlighting risks within contemporary spiritual movements (Halafoff et al., 2020c, 2022b; Yunkaporta, 2022).

In response to calls by scholars to pay closer attention to spirituality’s contextual differences (Fedele and Knibbe, 2020; Palmisano and Pannofino, 2021), this article now turns to a case study of spirituality in Australia to test the claims made above by international scholars regarding spirituality’s significance in contemporary society, its individual-personal/social-political dimensions, its benefits and risks, and its relationship to neoliberalism.

Spirituality in Australia: First Nations, religious, and holistic

Australia has always been a culturally, spiritually, and religiously diverse country, beginning with its First Nations peoples, and with large waves of immigration since the 1850s. This diversity has intensified since the 1970s, enabled by global travel, trade, and communication flows, with public interest in spirituality and participation in the associated wellness industry growing exponentially over the past 50 years (ABS, 2022; Bouma, 2006; Singleton et al., 2021). While there has been substantive research conducted and published in Australia on rising religious diversity and the non-religious, and an accompanying acknowledgement that Australia is a secular and multi-religious society in official domains, in, for example, the Australian curriculum (ACARA, 2022), spirituality remains typically marginalised and/or trivialised in academic and political spheres, despite its popularity (Bouma, 2006; Halafoff et al., 2022b; Tacey, 2000).

Fedele and Knibbe’s (2020) argument that the underlying reason for spirituality’s relative marginalisation is that it has been largely associated with women and the individual, private sphere echoes earlier claims by Tacey (2000: 68–69, 240) that the official ‘Australian national character is governed by a rationalistic, masculine and practical ethos’, resulting in the ‘denial of the sacred’ in Australia’s ‘stubbornly secular’ socio-political domains, despite its prevalence within the more creative and emotive, ‘feminine’ realms of the arts, health, and healing. Tacey argued that we are a culture ‘split (…) between thought and feeling’, with a ‘hidden spirituality’. Bouma (2006: 2, 33–35) agreed that Australians have a ‘much less explicit public spirituality’, with ‘a strong tendency towards’ a more ‘subdued’ and ‘laid back’ spirituality, located ‘on the margin, not the centre’. He used Australian historian Manning Clark’s phrase ‘a shy hope in the heart’ to describe Australian expressions of spirituality and religion, which are less overt than in other societies.

Tacey (2000: 96) further explained that Australian spirituality is more ‘down to earth’, connected to Country and First Nations cultures, embodied, and potentially revolutionary. According to First Nations scholar Vicki Grieves (2009: v), spirituality in Australia includes First Nations ‘knowledges that have informed ways of being, and thus wellbeing, since before the time of colonisation, ways that have been subsequently demeaned and devalued’. She stressed that spirituality

is also deeply appreciated by non-Aboriginal people who understand and value the different ontologies (understandings of what it means to be), epistemologies (as ways of knowing) and axiologies (the bases of values and ethics) that Aboriginal philosophy embodies, as potential value to all peoples.

More recently, First Nations scholar Tyson Yunkaporta (2019) has explored and shared First Nations knowledge systems in Australia with the wider public, and particularly their potential to contribute to planetary wellbeing and world-repairing in the face of ecological crises. He stresses complexity, relationality, and connectedness as central principles of First Nations wisdom. This spirituality, until recently, has been largely ‘beneath official religious notice’, given it does not fit within European colonial notions of the sacred, equated largely with Judeo-Christian faiths in lofty heights that divide the sacred from the profane and continue to dominate over and eclipse other forms of spirituality and religion in Australia (Tacey, 2000: 111).

In addition, we have observed that spirituality’s association with Asian cultures and religions also contributes to spirituality’s marginalisation in this country as, although Asian religions have a long history in Australia, they are relatively ‘invisible’ (Halafoff et al., 2022a; Hsu, 2016; Nattier, 1995) and receive less serious media attention, for example, compared to the Abrahamic faiths of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam (Halafoff et al., 2021; Weng and Halafoff, 2020). Even Tacey (2000) and Bouma (2006) did not sufficiently acknowledge Asian culture’s strong and earlier contribution to spirituality in Australia beyond more recent New Age influences.

Building upon Ghassan Hage’s (1998) insights, we also argue that Australia remains largely stuck in the myth of a White, Christian nation, rather than recognising its triangulated spiritual, religious, and non-religious – as well as it First Nations, Asian, and European – worldview complexity and reality (Bouma et al., 2022; Halafoff et al., 2021, 2022a; Weng et al., 2021). This is despite the ongoing presence and significance of First Nations spirituality and the fact that growing numbers of older and younger Australians identify as SBNR or as ‘religious and spiritual’, including those of multiple religious affiliations (Singleton et al., 2021). In addition, Australia’s rich Indigenous cultures, geographical proximity to Asia, and location in the Pacific region all differentiate Australian spirituality from that of the Global North, and this has yet to be sufficiently investigated or theorised (Halafoff et al., 2021, 2022b)

Moreover, regarding power relations, Tacey (2000) observed that the ‘dualism’ between spiritual and socio-political realms was ‘false’, with the spiritual increasingly playing a significant role in Aboriginal land rights and reconciliation, and environmental movements in the late twentieth century (Tacey, 2000: 2–3). Tacey (2000: 107) further explained how the ‘Australian spirit’ is ‘untamed’ and ‘challenging rather than consoling’. He also predicted that the long history of ‘Australian anti-authoritarianism’, derived from a convict past that resisted and rejected the ‘hierarchical and tyrannical’ threats of ‘punishment and retribution’ from British authorities, was likely to lead to an anti-authoritarian spirituality and ‘postcolonial consciousness’ (Tacey, 2000: 73, 81). This also aligns with Fedele and Knibbe’s (2020) argument that despite attempts to disempower spirituality – by relegating it to the private sphere – embodied, affective spiritual practices are empowering and subversive, as they challenge dominant patriarchal, rational, modernist paradigms, epistemologies, and power structures.

These arguments regarding the significance and complexity of spirituality in Australia – First Nations, religious, and holistic – are further strengthened by empirical evidence gathered in three recent Australian studies, discussed in more detail below. These studies explore the importance of spirituality to Australian teens, representations of spirituality in Australian media, and the nexus between conspiracy theories and spirituality in Australia during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Expressions of spirituality in Australia: a case study of Australian Teens

Recent Australian census data show that a decreasing proportion of the Australian population identifies as Christian (44%) and a growing proportion identifies as non-religious (39%) and as Muslims (3.2%), Hindus (2.7%), and Buddhists (2.4%) (ABS, 2022). Australians do not have the option to select ‘Spiritual’ or SBNR on the Census among the major religious and no religion categories, but other recent Australian studies have given participants the opportunity to identify as SBNR, or ‘spiritual and religious’. In a robust nationally representative survey of 1200 young Australians aged 13–18, the AGZ study, 22% reported being ‘Spiritual but not Religious’ and 16% ‘Religious and Spiritual’, ⁶ a total of 38% (Singleton et al., 2021: 57). This is a surprising finding, given that spirituality is typically associated in the public mind with older generations and mostly with the 1990s ‘New Age’ movement (see Mason et al., 2007). The AGZ study also found that females are more likely than AGZ males to identify as spiritual (Singleton et al., 2021: 85, 92).

The AGZ study also revealed a strong uptake of some practices that are often understood to be spiritual: 28% of AGZ teens had practised meditation and 22% had practised yoga. In terms of beliefs that are typically classified under the umbrella of spirituality, 20% believed in astrology, 29% in reincarnation, and 50% in karma (Singleton et al., 2021: 41, 47). The AGZ study also included interviews with 30 of the survey participants. Meditation, in particular, was something many Australian teens had tried at least once and several participants practised more regularly. Meditation was seen as fashionable and beneficial and was practised individually and socially with family and/or peers. Young people were also introduced to it through school, friends, and/or family. This included one participant who exclaimed, ‘all the cool kids do it these days… everyone talks about meditation’ [saying] it’s really good’ (Singleton et al., 2021: 41–44).

Other ‘spiritual’ practices were also enjoyed socially by Australian teens. For example, SBNR Freya described how she reads tarot cards with her friends: ‘a lot of the times when we hang out, we’ll just have, you know, a glass of wine, have, like, the crystals around us, [and do] tarot card readings’. Tarot was also central to Jana, who self-identified as Orthodox Christian, yet ‘not religious exactly’ but ‘new age’ ‘kind of spiritual’. She described reading tarot cards as a deeply personal and insightful practice, but also something she regularly does for her friends if they ask her to (Singleton et al., 2021: 44–46).

Significant numbers of Australian teens also reported experiencing an awareness of a higher presence or power (58%) or a connection to nature (76%) on at least one occasion. When asked about what places were sacred to her, Freya described how she likes sitting ‘at the very top of (…) giant pine trees’. She explained how ‘there’s just one [tree]… Like, I’ll just sit in that and look over the ocean and it’s just pristine’. She also added how she had challenged herself ‘to climb a different tree every single day. It was great fun’ and that she is ‘really about getting out into nature and nurturing myself’. Much like the way Freya approached tarot and spirituality generally, her sacred space of self-reflection was about nurturing herself in a way that is playful and pleasurable. At the same time, her connection to nature also inspired her environmental activism, including participating in anti-logging protests. Jana was also deeply concerned about animal rights and a vegetarian (Singleton et al., 2021: 51–53).

Similar to the findings of international studies cited above, the AGZ study revealed that many Australian teens view spirituality as a connection to nature or a ‘higher power’, which may or may not be experienced as ‘God’. They also hold several spiritual beliefs, such as karma and reincarnation, and engage in many eclectic practices, including meditation, yoga, tarot, prayer, and creativity with an emphasis on embodied self-care and personal growth. They sometimes did so on their own, but more often socially with friends and family. While spirituality can no doubt sometimes be ‘fun’, it is also something that many of the Australian teens take seriously. It can inform their ethical conduct in the world and the need to care for others, including animals and the environment (Halafoff et al., 2020a). This widespread interest in spirituality among Australian teens and spirituality’s association with the natural world are also evident in a recent analysis of worldviews in Australian media.

Representations of spirituality in Melbourne media

The RDA study’s Education stream included a Media component, and we report here on findings related to media representations of diverse worldviews during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Australian state of Victoria’s capitol city Melbourne. ⁷ Similarly to the AGZ study, the RDA Media study also found spirituality had a significant presence in Australia. A total of 1418 references included 1087 references for religion, 302 for spirituality, and 29 for the secular (Halafoff et al., 2021: 687). ⁸ In the spirituality category, the terms ‘spirituality’ received 103 mentions, ‘yoga’ 109, and mediation ‘90’ ⁹ (Halafoff et al., 2021: 695).

Most spirituality references were positive (57%), with 29% neutral and only 8% negative. In terms of genres, references to spirituality were mainly in Domestic News (34%), followed by Features (23%), Entertainment/Travel/Review (18%), and Sport (8%) (Halafoff et al., 2021: 685–686). By contrast, mentions of religion were largely neutral (55%), then positive (28%), and then negative (15%), and most occurred in Domestic News (35%), Opinion/Editorial (17%), Features (16%), and International News (11%) (Halafoff et al., 2021: 688). This reveals that spirituality is taken less seriously and viewed more positively than religion in Australian media.

However, spirituality was not always seen as distinct from religion or non-religion. Spirituality, yoga, and meditation were often equated with diverse religious traditions and with the secular/non-religious. Many references to spirituality, across all the papers, had a Christian focus. Spirituality was also mentioned in relation to Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Yoga (Azzopardi, 2020: 12; Halafoff et al., 2021).

Spirituality was also often discussed in relation to First Nations Australians. This included references to racial justice, such as the need to address ‘white privilege’, related to the ‘spiritual theft’ of land and resulting ‘spiritual crisis’, at the time of the Black Lives Matters Protests (Maglalogenis, 2020: 23; The Age, 2020a: 22). There were also many mentions of First Nations sacred places. Uluru and Kata Tjuta in Central Australia, for example, were described as Australia’s ‘spiritual heart’ (Maddison, 2020: 4). Travel was also said to ‘recharge our spiritual batteries, especially if we get out into nature’, with reference to meditation and pilgrimage in the forests of Japan (The Age, 2020c: 2). Some sports, and particularly those that took place in wild settings such as surfing and sailing, were also perceived as spiritual (Swanton, 2020: 28.). Art was said to provide ‘spiritual insight’ in times of crisis (Allen, 2020: 10), and gardening was viewed as a ‘spiritual, soul-nourishing activity’ (McManus, 2020: 4).

Spirituality, yoga, and meditation were also frequently cited as helpful for coping with the stresses related to the coronavirus, alongside other secular/non-religious methods of self-care, rest, and relaxation. This included both online and offline practices, such as meditation apps and yoga classes in local gyms, studios, workplaces, and schools (Azzopardi, 2020: 12; Carrol 2020: 27).

These RDA media data thereby reflect a pervading spirituality across many facets of everyday Australian life, and its largely positive public image, as spirituality is practised widely for wellbeing and turned to in times of need. There has also been a growing interest in First Nations culture and spirituality in Australia, for example, through learning about traditions and/or visiting sacred places, alongside a commitment to addressing racial injustice in recent years (Halafoff et al., 2021; Weng and Halafoff, 2020). Discussion of contemporary and holistic spirituality often appeared alongside religious and/or secular/non-religious factors and groups, indicating a lived, triangulated religious, spiritual, and non-religious worldview complexity (Bouma et al., 2022) in Australia, which was also observed in the AGZ study (Singleton et al., 2021).

At the same time, spirituality did not receive as much serious attention as religion in the Australian press, given it appeared in more local and less international news and opinion/editorial coverage. And yet, this RDA Media analysis demonstrates that there is a postcolonial shift occurring in Australia, where First Nations cultures are receiving far more considered attention, as are issues of countering racism (Halafoff et al., 2021).

In terms of negative coverage and risks, yoga classes were flagged as potential COVID spreaders (Hodge and Vasandani, 2020: 9; The Australian, 2020: 14). There was also some robust critique emerging of discredited spiritual and yoga gurus (The Age, 2020b: 8), wellbeing influencers, celebrities, and conspirituality, pointed particularly at Novak Djokovic and his partner, Jelena (Lutton, 2020: 32). Yoga and meditation were also often equated with wealthier suburbs, elite politicians and actors, and economic privileges (Chancellor, 2020: 14, Manelis, 2020: 4). This critique of spirituality in the mainstream media actually provides further evidence that it is perhaps beginning to be taken more seriously, given its association with structural violence and vaccine resistance.

(Con)spirituality, science, and COVID-19 in Australia

The CSCA study project focused on the spread of dis/misinformation among spiritual and wellbeing influencers during the height of the pandemic in 2020 and 2021. ¹⁰ The project team chose to bracket the ‘con’, to problematise the term conspirituality, and to encompass a wider spectrum of spiritual beliefs and practices, including those that are non-controversial and/or those that draw on conspiracy theories, ‘selling (con)spirituality’ in a marketised and hyper-mediatised world to raise their statuses and for financial gain (Halafoff et al., 2022b: 141, 143).

Many spiritual adherents, including First Nations peoples, have high degrees of mistrust towards state, scientific, and medical authorities, often for quite rational reasons given Australia’s settler-colonial and patriarchal history (Rocha, 2017; Yunkaporta, 2022). Spiritual epistemologies inform alternate ways of living from that of the mainstream and have a long history of opposing dominant culture. This in itself is not problematic, as many argue for the need to draw on First Nations, Asian, and pre-modern/non-materialist frameworks of interdependence to counter anthropocentrism and for world-repairing (Halafoff, 2021; Yunkaporta, 2019, 2022). While many people turned to various spiritual practices as supports during the COVID-19 crisis (Halafoff et al., 2020a, 2021), the CSCA study also revealed a more disturbing spiritual exceptionalism, in which some wellness influencers positioned themselves as having access to the ‘real’ and ‘hidden’ truth behind the pandemic and sought to convince others that they were in a spiritual war, and of the need to resist lockdowns and vaccine mandates that were threatening their freedom and sovereignty (Halafoff et al., 2020c, 2021, 2022b).

The CSCA study also documented a trend of ‘sciencey-spirituality’ in Australia, where (con)spiritualists both co-opt and critique science and technology to strengthen and spread their claims, how and when it suits them (Halafoff et al., 2022b: 157). For example, Australian conspiritualist, ‘Aussie Warrior’, ¹¹ and alternative health practitioner Neil Pascoe/Nate Max stated, at the height of the pandemic, that ‘Bill Gates’ vaccine, science, any of these websites like Facebook, Instagram, social media, they’re getting absolutely decimated by smart people who are understanding the narrative’. But later in the same YouTube video he called for ‘a global meditation’ as he had his ‘chi master sorted’, and ‘because that’s something that works, it’s scientifically proven’ that ‘we can co-create a new reality’ and ‘win this’ spiritual war ¹² (Halafoff et al., 2022b: 157).

The study also found that essentialised gender norms and hyper-masculine narratives calling men to ‘spiritual war’ are also challenging previous norms of female-dominated and non-violent spirituality (Halafoff et al., 2022b: 151, 158). Tacey’s (2000) prediction of an anti-authoritarian, revolutionary spirituality is certainly evident in the rise of conspirituality during COVID-19, but likely quite differently to how Tacey envisaged it.

Another key finding of the CSCA study is that, while there are some disturbing overlaps between them, the aesthetics and lexicon of conspiritual movements are distinct from Far-Right, and at times Christian, groups involved in spreading dis/misinformation, protesting restrictions and vaccine mandates, and threatening state authorities (Griera et al., 2022; Halafoff et al., 2022b: 159). It is thereby important not to conflate all members of holistic spiritual and wellbeing communities with ‘militant wellness’ (Gerrand, 2020). While there are many holistic spiritual adherents who may be vaccine-hesitant and vaccine-resistant, they seem generally less militant than Far-Right and/or Christian movements (Halafoff et al., 2022b: 15). More research, however, is required to develop a better understanding of these movements and processes of radicalisation occurring within them. In any case, this study also stresses the internal diversity within spirituality, its ambivalent peacebuilding and potentially violent elements, and thereby the need to take it more seriously.

Conclusion

These data reveal a spiritual complexity, as observed in the Australian context, that is similar in many ways to contemporary global spirituality in many places. Spirituality in Australia is made up of diverse practices and beliefs, where the presence of a higher power, which may or may not be experienced as God, is felt in sacred places and often equated with nature and the body. Spirituality is also centred on an ethics of care, for self and others. Spirituality is pervading, permeating all parts of private and public life. It is hybrid, composed of many eclectic and often contradictory elements. While it can be self-focused, it is also deeply relational, and it can also be violent and/or peacebuilding, both creating and countering direct and structural violence of settler-colonial, patriarchal societies and neoliberalism.

Our findings about Australia substantiate Fedele and Knibbe’s (2020) arguments and extend them in several ways. They reveal the pervading and enduring significance of spirituality in Australian society, among First Nations peoples, immigrants, and settlers, much of which has been previously undervalued and ignored. These findings strengthen Fedelle and Knibbe’s case and call to take spirituality more seriously, as part of a triangulated – spiritual, religious, and non-religious – worldview reality that has long existed in Australia and as a result of spirituality’s growing popularity globally and in this country. Despite this, Australia has remained largely stuck in outdated ‘world religions’ and religious/secular binary paradigms, and the myth of a White, Christian nation (Hage, 1998; Halafoff et al., 2021; Weng et al., 2021). There are indications that this is finally changing with a rising postcolonial and environmental ‘consciousness’ (Tacey, 2000), evident in increased interest in First Nations knowledges and in response to the global risk of climate change (Halafoff et al., 2021; Yunkaporta, 2019).

In addition, we have expanded Fedele and Knibbe’s (2020) helpful framework of ‘holistic spirituality’ and broader ‘contemporary spirituality’ to one of First Nations, religious, and holistic spirituality. While this arises from the Australian context, it could also be applied elsewhere. Concepts of spirituality, and spiritual wellbeing, in Australia are very much informed by First Nation’s knowledges and Asian religions and philosophies, and experienced as a sense of relational interconnectedness with, and belonging to, a greater whole that includes persons, the more-than-human, and the natural world (Yunkaporta, 2019). Drawing on Bramadat’s (2022) theory of ‘reverential naturalism’, we argue this reflects a more down-to-earth, irreverent, ¹³ ‘relational naturalism’, particular to the Australian context. We also contend that spirituality’s association with First Nations and Asian traditions has marginalised it from official domains, and that there is a strong need to further decolonise studies of religions in Australia and internationally to address these exclusions.

We also assert that significant risks associated with wellbeing influencers and spiritual movements, which intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic, regarding issues of dis/misinformation, nationalism, and violence are challenging spirituality’s peaceful/apolitical stereotype, and finally that this, alongside a growing nexus between spirituality and science, is impacting gender dynamics and drawing more men into spiritual movements (Halafoff et al., 2022b). These are trends that warrant further investigation.

We conclude by suggesting that spirituality is certainly not just a passé 1990s New Age phenomena, or simply replacing religion in the twenty-first century, and that its abiding presence in Australia and globally should no longer be ignored or downplayed. We also argue for the need for more in-depth research on spirituality and spiritual wellbeing in and beyond Australia to better inform polices, practices, and curricula to more adequately reflect the lived reality of contemporary societies that are increasingly non-religious, religiously diverse, and spiritual. ¹⁴