Is the spiritual not religious? Some caveats concerning religious diversity

Abstract

Religious diversity occupies a special place in our understanding of religion. Fundamentally, the related literature shows that today many individuals especially young people are both spiritual and religious, may or may not believe in God, and mostly self-identify as ‘not-religious’. This empirical reality thus de-emphasises the use of binaries (e.g. the religious and spiritual, this-worldly and otherworldly) for understanding the contemporary religious scene. However, this area of research is not without shortcomings. In fact, the empirical reality about religious diversity is partly based on a definition of religion and spirituality which is not specified in the related research. This article mainly focuses on this issue and shows how it can reinforce the unhelpful notion of the opposition between or the binary of religion and the secular and therefore downgrade an important theme in the literature which examines the religiosity of the secular.

Introduction

The mass exodus to the virtual world, the great waves of immigration, and generally the process of globalisation opened the window into other religious worlds and provided individuals with many religious options. Indeed, ‘[t]oday we encounter an array of religious traditions, originating from all around the globe and taking numerous forms. In this newly heterogeneous landscape, it is not necessarily the lone voice of a single tradition which influences us’ (Drew, 2011: 2) and therefore ‘no modern society can claim that there is no religious diversity within its boundaries’ (Richardson, 2014: 31).

It is thus not surprising that religious diversity has taken an increasingly important place within the sociology of religion. The evidence about religious diversity mostly comes from studies in which individuals’ worldviews and religious identity are empirically investigated. Mainly, participants’ answers to the questions about their religious affiliation(s) constitute the relevant data. The binary of religion and spirituality is de-emphasised by the related research due in large part to individuals’ (especially the youth’s) mixed and diverse self-identifications, for example, with spirituality and religion/non-religion (e.g. Bouma et al., 2022b; Halafoff et al., 2020). Accordingly, individuals in a single society may self-identify as both spiritual and religious, spiritual but not religious (SBNR), non-religious, and religiously committed who may or may not believe in God (Halafoff et al., 2020). It is due to this considerable degree of diversity that the use of binaries is considered to be problematic and is thus strongly de-emphasised by scholars who struggle to work with non-binary concepts (Bouma et al., 2022b).

However, it seems that there is a perpetuating paradox in this empirical reality due to scholars’ implicit retention of a particular interpretation of spirituality. In fact, scholars are already working with a definition, if not the binary, of religion and spirituality. It seems that discussions of religious diversity are mostly based on a juxtaposition of religion in its organised form with the not-religious categories which are mostly considered to be spiritual. For example, individuals’ references to practices such as yoga and meditation are categorised as ‘spirituality’ (Halafoff et al., 2023). Respondents’ opposition to institutional religion is another example which has given birth to the not-religious categories (Pew Research Centre, 2021; see Simmons, 2021). These ‘tacit hermeneutic assumptions’ about religion and spirituality (Simmons, 2021: 436) are not explicitly expressed in the related research. In other words, sociologists working on religious diversity and pluralism tend to ignore the fact that, as ever, ‘a definition of religion is in order’ (Yang, 2014: 56).

As the research on religious diversity and SBNR phenomenon is mushrooming in the field, this article aims to point out some caveats concerning this area of research in order for scholars to avoid sweeping generalisations due particularly to the ambiguity which arises when researchers avoid defining religion and spirituality. This will be done by drawing on the related evidence to which sociologists have paid far too little attention. First, the article accentuates the multidimensionality of the issue by briefly discussing the case of Iran. Next, a brief discussion on the definition of religion and spirituality is provided so as to highlight other perspectives on the issue and the possible bias in the evidence about religious diversity.

The inevitability of diversity: the case of Iran

I always wonder how my friends are categorised in the polls and opinion surveys on religious diversity which now are of great interest mostly to Western scholars. I live in Iran where I have friends who are either committed Muslims or non-mosque-goers who still believe in God (Godazgar, 2020). Some of them say their prayers at home but drink alcoholic beverages and do not fast as well. Some other holds a strong belief in eastern mysticism but uses magic mushrooms to better understand it! Also, I have a few friends who call themselves secular and are totally against Islam and organised religion, in general. Regarding the current uprising in Iran, this (so-called) secular society (Kamali, 2007) now has a greater grievance against the Islamic Republic (IR) or, more precisely, political Islam. This is not a new story because Iran’s society was already secular (in terms of the separation of religion and government) before the 1979 revolution (Bayat, 2007) about which many Iranians have remained nostalgic.

While Iran became a theocratic state in 1979, the 1960s provided a hinge moment in the history of the West and its society became more upfront about secularity and is (apparently) experiencing a secular age (Taylor, 2007). The secular people in Iran, unlike their counterparts in the United States, for example (Blankholm, 2022), have no rights to openly advertise and practice secularity and establish their own community. Indeed, they are still known as Muslims in the real world and considered to be religious. In the words of late Beckford (2010: 218), Iran is one of the countries ‘where [religious] diversity exists but where pluralism either does not exist or takes a very restricted form’. He (2014) emphasised that when it comes to religious diversity, sociologists are to consider whether religious pluralism is politically and legally accepted in a given context. Also, a society’s history of religious pluralism affects the way religious diversity is treated in that society (Richardson, 2014).

From the outset of the 1979 revolution, IR as a theocratic state has either denied or challenged religious diversity and actively discouraged the development of rival religions in the country (Richardson, 2014), hence the severe restrictions on religious pluralisation. Nonetheless, as was mentioned, religious diversity is inevitable in the contemporary world and Iran is no exception. During the presidency of the reformists, the implementation of some political plans helped the promotion of non-Islamic thought in Iran. When Khamenei became the Supreme leader, Rafsanjani assumed presidency in 1989 and greatly contributed to the development of a competitive society in Iran. Competition gradually became part and parcel of Iranians’ modern life by which they quantified almost all aspects (including religious aspects) of their life and exhibited an increased tendency to individualism (see Adelkhah, 2000) likely to reconstruct their collective identity as Muslims.

Rafsanjani believed that ‘there was nothing un-Islamic in accumulation of wealth’ and therefore prioritised consumerism over asceticism and simultaneously underscored the importance and the advantage of work over idleness (Harris, 2016: 156). He aimed to introduce a series of neoliberal policies such as the privatisation of enterprises, reduction of subsidies, and the inflow of foreign goods and direct investment (Povey, 2019; Valadbaygi, 2021). The inflow of foreign consumer goods into the country dramatically changed the marketplace and provided opportunities for capital accumulation. Under the global-market regime (Gauthier, 2020a), Iranians especially the youth began to develop a consumerist lifestyle and take the opportunities to express their modern self (Jafari, 2007).

Moreover, reformists such as Rafsanjani and his successor Khatami ‘attempted to move away from the revolutionary discourse in which the state exists to serve the people, to a new one – that of civil society, transparency and rights’ (Povey, 2019: 11). On the other hand, the clergy’s and the conservatives’ commitment to promote populist and welfare policies supported by Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have always militated against the full implementation of the reformists’ policies as they were likely to lessen the power of the state and change IR’s revolutionary identity. For example, the Green Movement (the 2009–2010 mass protests) of reformists sparked by the apparent manipulation of Ahmadinejad’s re-election to presidency lost strength when its leaders, Mousavi and Karroubi, were held under house arrest. This movement was a serious threat to the legitimacy of IR in that in the ensuing violent anti-government demonstrations, for the first time, Iranians shouted ‘Freedom, Independence and Iranian republic’ and not ‘Islamic republic’ which raised concerns about a revolutionary movement (Abdolmohammadi and Cama, 2015). After months of massive demonstrations and street fighting, the movement was suppressed by IR’s repressive apparatus through killings and arrests.

Due to Iranians’ discontent with IR (its ailing economy and repressive policy), unsurprisingly, Rouhani, the next president (2013–2021), was elected to bring about a reconciliation with the United States and European countries on the nuclear crisis and to ensure economic prosperity. The supporters of the reformist movement were understandably reluctant to participate in the election. However, ‘the endorsement that Rouhani received from the reformist leaders (...) played a crucial role in mobilising the middle class to vote for him’ (Raisi, 2019: 12). Rouhani failed in his attempt to handle nuclear crisis and implement political reform which had brought renewed hope to reformists. This failure was basically due to Khamenei’s strong support for the conservative theocratic faction (Ghobadzadeh and Rahim, 2016). Another reason was IRGC’s influence over foreign policy which even brought Rouhani into conflict with Khamenei (Shahi and Abdoh-Tabrizi, 2020). Hence, in this regard, up to 2021, what Rouhani mainly did during his presidency was the conduction of a few nuclear talks whose result neither defused the nuclear crisis nor brought about economic prosperity which he had solemnly promised.

Afterwards, a majority of Iranians saw themselves as the mere puppets of the prolonged political rivalry between the conservatives and the reformists and thus their hopes for political and economic reform were shattered. Indeed, IR ‘lost the main body of its core constituency, the Oppressed, mainly due to its outright failure to achieve economic prosperity’ (Shahi and Abdoh-Tabrizi, 2020: 14). The bloody demonstrations in 2017 and 2019 over the rapid increase in the price of eggs and petrol turned a few districts into war-zones and marked ‘the near-total demolition of every aspect of the Islamic Republic’s legitimacy’ for a significant part of the population (Shahi and Abdoh-Tabrizi, 2020: 14). IR’s further political repression fueled Iranians’ dissatisfaction with the state especially the clergy and the conservatives including IRGC.

And today, a young generation called the 80s (the generation born between 2002 and 2011) who have developed a (so-called) secular identity is hungry for a democratic change. The 80s are globally connected and fashion-forward in that they are highly active in the social media, which is one of the key factors in the facilitation of religious freedom and pluralism (Yang, 2014). The 80s constitute the main group of protesters who strongly believe that political Islam is unreasonable. When, in its desperate attempt, IR offered its old political solution and surprisingly gave the reformist leaders (under house arrest or banned on political activities) freedom of expression, the new reformist ideas were debated and then debunked by the 80s, the protesters, and even by the supporters of the reformists themselves. Iranians’ fight for democracy has now entered its second year.

These anti-government groups (advocates of the reformists, the bereaved families, the 80s, etc.) cannot simply considered to be non-religious, spiritual, or secular. This populace in Iran in fact is fighting against a particular form of religion (i.e. political Islam) for social, economic, and political reasons. Indeed, the increase in people identified with no religion could be limited to a specific time, is not always connected to a loss of religious piety, and could mainly be attributed to political issues (Hout and Fischer, 2002).

Moreover, it is important to consider that the concept of secularism is foreign to most Iranians. The word itself does not appear at all in public space and formal secular organisations, in contrast to Western countries, are not allowed to operate in Iran. What the above-cited works, for example, consider a secular society in Iran is based on academic understanding of the phenomenon rather than Iranians’ self-designation. Most Iranians are unsurprisingly ‘critical of the condition of society’ and do not consider themselves to be ‘religious’’ (Godazgar, 2020: 13), but it is unreasonable to assume and appears unclear whether they self-identify as secular or spiritual in research on religious diversity. This issue is applicable to other Asian contexts. As Gellner and Hausner (2016: 77) discussed, in Nepal, for example,

the practice of classifying people into discrete religious boxes started only in 1950s, when people – or at least the census-enumerators – had to be taught how to apply the categories. ‘What is your religion?’ was not then a meaningful question to many people; by contrast, ‘what is your caste?’ was unavoidable, and in most context permitted only one exclusive answer.

Spirituality too is perceived differently in Iran. It is ‘usually synonymous with mysticism and mainly appears in stories related to spiritual journeys of “Sufis” and biographies of saints’ in Persian literature (Rafi, 2016: 26). Everyone with whatever religious background or spiritual and secular tendency (as they are academically understood) is likely to feel connected to this form of spirituality due particularly to its apparent non-creedal and non-denominational way of understanding humanity. For example, as Mojaddedi (2017) stated, the poems of Rumi are a major source of understanding spirituality for the SBNR in North America. However, he further argued that Rumi was a theologian of Islam the ugly side of which is most commonly associated with in the same region:

Rumi, who is the most popular poet today in America, viewed himself as following mystically in the footsteps of the founder of the Islamic religion, Muhammad, whose biography’s less otherworldly depictions are the main inspiration for bigoted extremists among Muslims, such as the Islamic State. (2017: 57)

Mojaddedi then noted that Rumi’s ‘message is not that spiritual disciples can be individualistic’ (2017: 59) and Rumi, similar to many other Persian mystics, in fact, emphasises the need to follow a spiritual master and adhere to religious rituals, which the SBNR de-emphasise or do not refer to.

After the triumph of the Islamic revolution in 1979, Persian mysticism was given a somewhat similar interpretation by religious intellectuals. In essence, they argue that Islam is to be rationalised and emphasise that spirituality (ma’naviyat) is central to religiosity (see Doostdar, 2012). For example, as Izadi’s (2020) comprehensive study shows, Mostafa Malekiyan, one of the most famous religious intellectuals in Iran, believed that traditional religiosity is incompatible with modernity and therefore modern beings need to abandon their old traditional view of religion so as to lessen their pain and suffering and live a happy life. However, as Izadi further discussed, Malekian’s contemporary understanding of spirituality confirms the gradual expansion of new spiritualities into the Islamic realm in that Malekian later stated that spirituality arises from rationality and ‘it can be an alternative for both organised religion and a totally secular worldview, although can include some elements from both sides’ (2020: 49). As will be discussed in the next section, this attempt to stay in a fuzzy space between organised religion and the secular (neither religious nor secular) could not simply be regarded as spirituality.

Based on the above discussion, collectively, it is reasonable to deduce that the empirical reality about religious diversity disseminated by most (Western) scholars is not simply generalisable to Iran and other non-Western contexts. In fact, what has created the widespread discontent with IR is political Islam. It is thus unreasonable to work on the assumption that religion is in decline in Iran. Scholars have questioned this assumption and emphasised that in contemporary society it is in fact a particular form of religion which is in decline (e.g. Gauthier, 2020a). For example, in his comprehensive work, Gauthier (2020a) has argued that secularisation paradigm has given rise to the misguided notion of the opposition between religion and the secular and has more precisely caused the decline of church religion. As was discussed, most Iranians have once been content with theocracy due to IR’s advocacy of reformism, but, gradually, they began to turn to a new religiosity and question the authority of religious leaders (Khosrokhavar, 2007). Despite their reluctance to go to the mosque and the deep contempt they feel for the saints (Godazgar, 2020), caution is in order lest we presume that religious decline captures what is truly happening to religion. It is in fact the story of a particular form of religion, that is, political Islam.

It is undeniable that religious diversity exists in Iran, but understanding that diversity requires a more adequate delineation of what constitute ‘religion’ and ‘non-religion’. For example, Iranians who do not identify with political Islam should not simplistically be considered to be not religious, let alone spiritual. Importantly, the idea of the turn to spirituality or the rise of the ‘nones’ or increasing numbers of people who identify as SBNR or any other assumed meaning of a religiously unaffiliated status should be treated with caution. The notion that spirituality, as opposed to religion, is on the rise is in fact a Western scenario in which church religion provides the standard for religion (Gauthier, 2020b). Accordingly, a majority of the nones are in fact not churchly religious, and the reason why they are considered to be not-religious is their opposition to this form of religion (Simmons, 2021) which tells us a Western story of secularisation (Spickard, 1998, 2020). This story is not generalisable to Islamic countries where there is no church ‘in the sense of a hierarchical institution with established doctrinal authority, operating largely independently of the state’ (Krämer, 2013: 631). More importantly, any account of the empirical reality of religious diversity is then based on definitions of religion and spirituality which may be inappropriate to the context. These issues are discussed in more detail in the next section.

The conceptual complexity of religious diversity

The purpose of this section is not to provide a definition of religion or spirituality. Rather, it aims to highlight the paradox and missing details in the empirical research on religious diversity in the hope of unravelling some tangled threads of the existing conceptual complexity. This issue is crucial because sociologists are making deliberate attempts to investigate spirituality outside the realm of organised religion (Singleton, 2016). This, in the first place, necessitates a discussion on what Troeltsch (1931) emphasised at the outset of the twentieth century. Among the three distinct strands of Christianity, that is, church religion, sect religion, and spiritual/mystical religion, Troeltsch (1931) put emphasis on the third concept which ‘successfully captures the dual revolt against secularity and established religion’ and does not merely emphasise mystical or spiritual experience which could be ‘combined with every kind of worship, myth and doctrine and can manifest itself in many forms and hence has no particularly distinctive sociological consequences’ (Campbell, 1978: 147). Rather, spiritual religion is ‘independent in principle, contrasted with concrete religion’ and has the distinguishing characteristics which enable it to replace the established religion (Troeltsch, 1931: 734).

From Troeltsch’s (1931) work, what could be woven into the texture of our discussion are ‘syncretism’ and ‘individualism’ as the main features of spiritual religion. As Campbell (1978) put it, ‘because of its rejection of dualism and its indifference to literal truth, spiritual and mystical religion does not necessarily lead to a position of hostility in relation to secular culture’. Relatedly, Campbell (1978: 149) states that polymorphism, syncretism, and individualism are common characteristics of spiritual religion and modern spirituality which is mostly characterised by the battle between secularity and established church religion. Campbell (1978) stresses that sociologists have failed to make use of Troeltsch’s work and thus points to an important approach to understanding the contemporary religious scene which is worth quoting at length here:

The adoption of Troeltschian perspective gives rise to a different view of the question of the relation between secularisation and the rise of the new religiosity; one which concentrates less upon any sequential connection and more upon the possibility that they are merely facets of the same, single trend. This becomes possible once secularisation is re-defined as the decline of church religion, in which case secularisation and the rise of the new religiosity are then seen to be simply two aspects of the same process, i.e. the change-over from church religion to mystic religion; a fundamental process of social and cultural change in which identical forces can be seen to be responsible for the decline of the one and emergence of the other. (Campbell, 1978: 150)

To our dismay, the opposition between religion and the secular is still ‘sociology’s default view’ which at its heart de-emphasises the role that religion plays in individuals’ private lives (Spickard, 2017, 2020) and, as this article tries to accentuate, the religiosity of spirituality in that the spiritual are not definitely not religious (Beaman and Beyer, 2016). Indeed, as was mentioned, the Western view of religion based on secularisation has given rise to a particular interpretation of spirituality or the not-religious which is observable in the research on religious diversity.

For example, although the evidence about religious diversity puts emphasis on a non-binary understanding of the contemporary religious landscape (Bouma et al., 2022a), it is at least in part based on some secularisation-oriented binaries. The category of ‘this worldly’ as opposed to ‘religiously committed’ self-identified by Australian teens in Singleton et al.’s (2019) study is a relevant example. In its project report, the former category which accounts for the largest group of Australian teens is based on respondents’ dissociation with any form of religion, strong belief in this-worldly existence, and strong tendency to be science-y. Regarding the opposition between two categories, it can be implied that the data interpretation is based on a definition of religion founded on secularisation theory which opposes, for example, the supernatural to the scientific (Spickard, 1998). This is indeed a widely held view among teens which is also observable in other related polls and surveys.

As Barna Group’s (2011) 5-year project reveals, young people regard churches as antagonistic to science or Christianity as anti-science which is one of the reasons why they are leaving church. Most of these participants who are known as SBNR in the literature ‘seem to have the “authoritative” conception of religion in mind when they affirm their identity as “not religious”’ (Simmons, 2021: 8). This antagonistic attitude towards religious authorities is also observable in Ammerman’s (2013) famous study whose participants tried to draw moral boundaries between themselves and those who are anti-science religionists. Also, her study shows that the issue of scandals involving religious leaders and institutions is another reason for this sense of detachment.

Relatedly, another recent research release of Barna Group (2023) reveals that, in fact, ‘openness to Jesus is not the problem – the church is’. According to this report, 71% of Americans especially Millennials like and respect Jesus and his message, but not so much his messengers due in large part to their ‘hypocrisy’ especially those in megachurches, famous celebrity pastors, or celebrities who are Christian. Also, another important finding of Barna Group’s (2011) project is that 3 out of 10 young Christians believe that ‘churches are afraid of the beliefs of other faiths’ and felt they are ‘forced to choose between [their] faith and [their] friends’. However, this seems to be due to participants’ lack of knowledge about Christianity which Barna Group is determined to address. In fact, this populace is seemingly unaware that

some Christians believe that it is possible and even necessary not only to accept in theory this or that doctrine or practice of other religions and to incorporate them, perhaps in a modified form, into Christianity but also to adopt and live the beliefs, moral rules, rituals, and monastic practices of religious traditions other than those of Christianity, perhaps even in the midst of the community of the devotees of other religions. (Phan, 2003: 497)

As Phan (2003) emphasised, multiple religious belonging is an important fact relevant to religious diversity about which Christians should be educated.

Indeed, the issue of ‘belonging’ paints a very complicated picture of religious diversity. Importantly, research on religious belonging stresses the need to treat the results of the related censuses with caution. For example, individuals mostly choose an ‘in-between’ space which is not totally detached from organised religion due to various reasons such as their parents’ adherence to different religions or their own exposure to other religions (Beaman and Beyer, 2016). Day importantly stated that ‘Between the sacred and the secular is “belief”, acting performatively like a hinge to allow different identities to swing into the foreground or recede’ (2016: 61). Her longitudinal empirical research (2016) reveals that individuals may attend churches due to their belief in family relationship or support. For example, she explains how a research participant identified as non-religious attended her parent’s regular church when her niece died and that it was being with her family that made her oscillate between the sacred and the secular. Also, Day (2016) posits that individuals may feel forced to select the Christian box in censuses for asserting their cultural or family identity against an ‘other’.

What further muddies the water is ‘a rather large gap between what people actually do in the privacy of their own shrine room and their declared identities when responding to census-takers or when participating in public meetings’ (Gellner and Hausner, 2016: 75). In addition to religious practice, other examples are the inherency of multiple belonging in a context, the fall of a regime, or the purposeful omission or absence of an option in censuses based on modernist assumptions about unitary belonging which affect respondents’ selection of boxes.

Notwithstanding these facts, the data on religious diversity show that they at least in part are based on the binary of religion and spirituality/secularity which does not fully explain the diversity within the not-religious categories. The above discussion points to the crucial fact that the reasons why respondents choose particular boxes or share peculiar worldviews in research on religious diversity must be provided as accompanying evidence. In other words, what shapes participants’ perception of religion is of equal importance in the related research. For example, it is reasonable to deduce that the so-called ‘scientised spirituality or spiritualised science’ sold by some self-help gurus (Rimke, 2020) is highly likely to affect our interpretation of what young science-minded generations think of religion. In other words, we tend to regard this mixture of science and spirituality as ‘not-religious’ and its believers as SBNR.

Among many advocators of this form of spirituality, a notable example is the scientised spirituality propagated by the best-selling author Joe Dispenza. As the ultimate ‘scientific’ spiritual authority (Montell, 2021), Dispenza tries to help his followers become supernatural by practicing mindfulness. In his self-help books, he offers a mix of quantum physics and neuroscience to his army of followers who claim that ‘he’s helped them manifest everything from their dream job to their spouse to their cancer remission’ (Montell, 2021: 182). As Montell (2021: 182–191) discussed, Dispenza and his counterparts have popularised the once-weird supernatural ideas based on pseudo-scientific evidence which is propagated in ‘the ultimate pseudochurch to which billions of us belong’, that is, ‘social media’. For other researchers (Burton, 2020; van Valen, 2017) too, this digital space is now an alternate source of community by which new religions offer what institutional religion once did.

As was mentioned, research on religious diversity contains a definition of religion. Simmons (2021: 4) explained that ‘for anyone to self-identify as SBNR, it is crucial to understand that they are already working with a definition of “religion” such that they are rejecting it as appropriate to their own self-designation’. From his discussion, it can be implied that the related literature is partly based on ‘sociology’s default view’ (Spickard, 2020) mentioned above. Drawing on the available data which indicate that a great majority of the SBNR adhere to some form of theism, Simmons asserted that the rejection of the religious does not equate to the rejection of theism and therefore the ‘SBNR are not “not religious” in the sense of not believing in God’ (2021: 5) and they in fact reject special versions of organised religion.

He also pointed to the fact that individuals’ perception of religion (rejection or acceptance) in the SBNR research is likely to be affected by the way religion is being performed in the given context and in the time when data are collected. For example, Simmons (2021) argued, social and political issues with which particular communities within a country are struggling and agree or disagree may negatively affect what the members of those communities accept or reject in their self-designation. They may, for example, regard religion as ‘a polarising force that potentially works against the shared social hope that underwrites the idea of democratic life’ (Simmons, 2021: 8).

This reminds us of our discussion on the case of Iran and the current uprising in this country. This time, Iranians’ opposition to the government has marked a milestone in the history of the country in that they are fighting hard against political Islam and asking for a democratic change. Even a cursory look at the social platforms via which Iranians express their grief and anger reveals that now Muslims are poles apart in their religious attitudes, let alone the Iranian people who are considered to be secular (Kamali, 2007) or those who even treat the saints as ‘ordinary human beings’ and sometimes even insult them (Godazgar, 2020: 10). This form of characterisation of the saint is condemned as blasphemous in (Iranian) Islam and, from Islamists’ view, deserves capital punishment. Moreover, during the current uprising, most bereaved families who have lost their beloved ones (children and teenagers) in the protests are asking: Where is God? Why doesn’t God help us? This antagonistic attitude towards religion is easily observable in the contemporary Iran and is to be more precisely considered an opposition to political Islam.

Collectively, thus, we must be mindful of the possible bias which the terms ‘spiritual’ and ‘religious’ may introduce into the relevant research with regard to the phenomenological factors affecting the way these terms are conceptualised. The fundamental questions to be asked are: While the research on religious diversity de-emphasises the binaries, do not SBNR and not-religious boxes or terms checked and used in surveys inadvertently give rise to the binary of religion and spirituality (Kenneson, 2015)? What do the words ‘spiritual’ and ‘religious’ mean and connote in the term SBNR? As Kenneson (2015: 5) astutely put it, is the SBNR data

actually tracking a change in religious belief and practice, or is it tracking primarily the influence of a certain culturally charged rhetoric that infuses our current notions of spiritual and religious, a rhetoric whose very purpose seems to underscore a distinction precisely in order to privilege one term and denigrate the other?

How is it possible to measure the degree to which an individual deviates from organised religion? What exactly does this deviation mean if we disregard the Western story of secularisation? How is modern spirituality different from the similar concept that Troeltsch (1931) brought to the fore at the outset of the twentieth century, that is, spiritual religion? And the two most fundamental questions are: Is the spiritual not really religious in the sense of rejecting church or political religion? What does the evidence about religious diversity offer in relation to the rise of new religions?

Concluding remarks

Most of today’s young generations (particularly Generation Z or generally the science-minded) reject religious institution and authority, creed, the otherworldy, and the like. Generally, they have adopted an antagonistic attitude towards the institutional or political form of religion and therefore self-identify as ‘not religious’. They express a diverse and mixed worldviews ranging from religiously committed to religiously unaffiliated known as the nones. This religious diversity in contemporary society is understood based on a definition of religion. Explicitly or implicitly, a juxtaposition of organised religion with the opposite phenomena is usually in order. In this regard, secularisation is the most famous phenomenon which almost always plays a role in the understanding of religious diversity. However, as was discussed, secularisation theory only tells us the Western story of religion (Spickard, 2020) whose message is more precisely about the decline of a ‘particular and peculiar historical form of religion’, that is, church religion (Gauthier, 2020b: 312) or, as the case of Iran shows, political religion.

Notwithstanding this peculiarity, scholars of religion and sociologists mostly use generic terms such as SBNR and the nones to specify what is happening to religion. There is no doubt that religious diversity exists in almost all modern societies (Richardson, 2014) and people are remixing religion (Burton, 2020). However, scholars’ emphasis on the non-binary concepts or not-religious categories to capture the religious change is likely to deterministically lead to the promotion of a view of religion which is mainly based on the Western theory of secularisation.

As Dubuisson (2003) argued, the Western construction of religion or the Christianity-based understanding of it prescribes a set of antitheses such as true religion/false religion, sacred/profane, God/humanity, reason/revelation, and religion/science. For him, this has given rise to a biased theoretical framework based on which most scholars acquire their understanding of ‘others’, especially non-Western cultures. In Dubuisson’s (2003) view, this ethnocentric fantasy is a legacy of the nineteenth-century colonial scholarship and generally of Christian culture. The Western construction of religion based mainly on opposition was perceived as the model or the absolute reference and as

the humanistic, universalist project that, despite the fact that it has remained viscerally ethnocentric, [had] the merit of seeking to think of humankind outside of its limited and relative worlds (made up of various cultural boundaries and conditionings), and even despite them. (Dubuisson, 2003: 112)

In fact, as Dubuisson (2019) discussed, the idea of the universality of religion is an invention that emerged with Western imperialism.

Relatedly, van der Veer (2013) showed how understanding of religion and spirituality is partly rooted in imperial interactions with the East in nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He compared the ways in which China and India have been transformed by imperial modernity and highlighted the different regulation of religion and spirituality in these countries. According to him, the special marriage of science and spirituality and a blending of mysticism and rationalism propagated by known figures in China and India were due particularly to the perceived backwardness of Chinese and Indian traditions or generally civilisations by the modern West.

van der Veer’s work generally underscores the importance of making context-specific claims about spirituality in that ‘its trajectory differs from place to place as it is inserted in different historical developments’ (2013: 36). Spirituality’s very vagueness, as van der Veer posited, ‘as distinctive from both the religious and the secular has made it productive as a concept that bridges many discursive traditions across the globe’ (2013: 36). This is in fact, he further argued, ‘a central contradiction in the concept of spirituality’ in that ‘it is at the same time seen as universal and as tied to conceptions of national identity’ (2013: 36).

In this regard, as this article generally suggests, it would be beneficial for sociologists to specify what particular story of religious change they are focusing on and to use more precise terms such as ‘spiritual but not churchly/politically religious’ if the Western secularisation theory is the basis of their analysis. Also, they are to provide a definition of religion and spirituality based on which the empirical reality about religious diversity is disseminated. They should also bear in mind that this empirical reality is only a part of the issue of religious change and cannot capture all that is going on in the religious landscape.

By taking these decisive factors into consideration, scholars can go beyond sociology’s default view or the one-dimensional view of religion discussed earlier in the article. In other words, they will avoid building their analysis on the misguided notion of the opposition between religion and the secular (Gauthier, 2020a) which robs secularity of religiosity. Indeed, the religiosity of the secular is a significant theme in the literature which the existing evidence about religious diversity is likely to overlook. This literature, generally speaking, shows that the nones or SBNR are remixing religion and following a new form of religion (Burton, 2020). In fact, similar to the religiously committed, the so-called secular people have their own community, perform particular rituals, and follow special traditions (Blankholm, 2022). As Burton (2020) showed, compared to organised religion, the new religion which the nones and SBNR follow tries to serve the same purpose in a new way. Fundamentally, Burton’s thorough discussion points to the crucial fact that although this new religion is ‘decoupled from institutions, from creeds, from metaphysical truth-claims about God or the universe’, it nevertheless ‘seeks – in various and varying ways – to provide us with the pillars of what religion always has: meaning, purpose, community, ritual’ (2020: 12).

Relatedly, the notable features that characterise new forms of religion mostly render them non-religious. Two prime examples are individualism and syncretism as central features of new spiritualities such as New Age (Redden, 2005) and self-help (Rimke, 2020). While secularisation theory and the binary of religion and spirituality categorise these movements as secular or spiritual and therefore non-religious, some scholars, from a different perspective, consider them to be religious. As for self-help, for example, Davari-Torshizi (2023) argued that self-help is a religion under the guise of the secular. By considering religion as an abstract concept which is gradually reified by its authorities and followers, Davari-Torshizi (2023) highlighted self-help’s close similarity to organised religion. For example, he pointed out self-help’s transnationalism, its dark side, and psychocentricity based on which its gurus determine the right and wrong. This form of religion in Islamic countries like Iran (and in Christian-inherited countries) could affect individuals’ perception of religion in general and the evidence about religious diversity in particular.

As was mentioned, this changeover from church religion to a form of religion whose main features are individualism and syncretism was emphasised by Troeltsch (1931) at the outset of the twentieth century. This is not to say that modern spirituality is the same as spiritual religion as one of the strands of the world religions. Rather, the main argument is that spirituality’s emphasis on the scientific and this-worldly does not simply place it against ‘religion’. In essence, sociologists’ retention of the implicit interpretation of spirituality as non-religious especially in research on religious diversity perpetuates the opposition between religion and the secular and promotes the mistaken idea that spirituality is purely diverse and devoid of dogma and religiosity. This sweeping generalisation about religion overlooks an important theme in the literature which concentrates on the religiosity of the secular. If the particular view of religion on which scholars concentrate is specified, both avenues of research will deepen our understanding of the contemporary religious scene.