Course Resources Archive

This module traces the scope and nature of contemporary understandings of ‘the spiritual’. It will include material on new-age thought, neo-Pagan and Goddess notions of the divine, and on how longstanding religious traditions engage with the new-age milieu.

This module look at the idea of a ‘spirituality’, initially in tension with the idea of the ‘religious’, and the 20

th

Century rise of “non-religious spiritual movements”. The accounts of spirit articulated in counter-culture will be interrogated and delineated, as will the responses of major religious faiths.

The neo-pagan and wicca movements will be placed in a broader social and intellectual context, as will the use of the ‘spiritual’ within broader popular culture. Environmental issues will be important, and their prominence in monistic pantheism will be studied.

The module will also consider the relation between public and private accounts of the religious and spiritual.

A student passing this module should be able to:

1.    Articulate the debates around the ‘privatisation of faith’ and  

where emergent spiritualities fit in this debate

2.    Recognise and critically represent the relationship between ‘spiritual’ discourses and religious ones.

3.    Critically interrogate historical accounts of spirituality within religious traditions.

4.    Place emergent spiritualities in a broader social context, in relation to each other, religious traditions, and philosophical movements.

5.    Reflect on social, intellectual and psychological consequences of emergent spiritualities.

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The Library Catalogue contains full details of the current reading list for this module. Further details may also be found in the Module Guide.