Материал: The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion by John Hinnells

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Berger, P. (1969) The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books.

Berger examined the phenomenon of secularization in the second half of this classic work. In more recent works, Berger has rejected the notion of secularization.

Bruce, S. (1995) ‘The Truth About Religion in Britain’ in Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 34: 417–430.

The article comprised a succinct example of Bruce’s argument.

Bruce, S. (2002) God Is Dead: Secularization in the West. Oxford: Blackwell.

The book covered the arguments of major contributors to the secularization debate and includes a restatement of Bruce’s position.

Casanova, J. (1994) Public Religions in the Modern World. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. An informative and well-researched book in which Casanova looked at what he termed the ‘deprivatization’ of religion in the modern world.

Davie, G. (1994) Religion in Britain since 1945: Believing Without Belonging. Oxford: Blackwell.

Davie argued that religious belief persists, but not necessarily in traditional forms, hence her use of the phrase ‘believing without belonging’.

Durkheim, É. (1912) The Elementary Forms of Religious Life trans. Karen Fields 1995. New York: Free Press.

Durkheim’s classic work on religion, in which he concluded that, because it is essential to society, religion will not disappear.

Greeley, A. (1972) Unsecular Man: The Persistence of Religion. New York: Schocken.

The book was an early rebuttal of Wilson’s thesis, and especially its applicability to the United States.

Hanson, S. (1997) ‘The Secularization Thesis: Talking at Cross Purposes’ in Journal of Contemporary Religion 12,2: 159–180.

A concise account of problems arising from the way terms and data are deployed in the secularization debate.

Martin, D. (1969) The Religious and the Secular. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

David Martin has produced a number of important works on secularization. This early work comprised another rebuttal to Wilson’s thesis.

Popper, K. (1989) Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. London: Routledge. 5th edition (revised).

In which Popper set out the conditions under which a theory is properly scientific.

Stark, R. (1985) ‘Europe’s receptivity to religious movements’ in R. Stark ed. Religious Movements: Genesis, Exodus and Numbers. New York: Paragon.

A classic account of Stark and Bainbridge’s thesis, in which Stark argued that Europe was far more religious than proponents of secularization suggested.

Stark, R. and L. R. Iannaccone (1994) ‘A Supply-side Re-interpretation of the “Secularization” of Europe’ in Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 33: 230–252.

The article outlines rational choice theory and their understanding of its contribution to the secularization debate.

Swatos, W. H. and Olson, D. V. ed. (2000) The Secularization Debate. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

A collection of essays from critics and supporters of the secularization thesis.

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Taylor, C. (2007) A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Taylor’s analysis of the historical emergence of secular thought, and argument for a contemporary secularity that involves the multiplication of religions and spiritualities.

Weber, M. (1930) The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism trans. by Talcot Parsons. London: Allen & Unwin.

Weber’s classic work on Protestantism and its secularizing impact.

Wallis, R. (1986) ‘Figuring Out Cult Receptivity’ in Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 25: 494– 503.

Roy Wallis’s reply to Rodney Stark’s 1985 article that argued that Europe was not as secular as had been suggested.

Wilson, B. (1966) Religion in Secular Society. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Wilson’s classic account of the removal of religion from the public sphere.

Chapter 19

Mysticism and spirituality

Richard King

What do we mean by mysticism and spirituality?

‘Mysticism’ and ‘spirituality’ have proven particularly difficult concepts to define for a number of reasons. First, such terms tend to be used in a rather woolly and ill-defined manner in everyday language. The adjective ‘mystical’, for instance, is commonly used to describe any object, person, event or belief, which has a vaguely mysterious aspect to it. It is also applied to extraordinary experiences of union, whether religious or not, and to the supernatural, the magical and the occult in general. ‘Spiritual’ is similarly vague in its popular usage. The term ‘mysticism’ as a specific category is of more recent origin, reflecting the modern love of ‘-isms’, and did not come into use until the end of the nineteenth century when it was used to denote that aspect of the Christian tradition which emphasised the indescribable (ineffable) nature of God and the importance of attaining an experiential union with the divine. Both terms are related to the term ‘la mystique’, which, as Michel de Certeau (1992) has demonstrated, first came to the fore in seventeenth-century France.

In the modern era mysticism has also been closely associated with the notion of spirituality and with the religions of the East. Today it is not uncommon for people to say that they are spiritual or that they have spiritual beliefs but that they are not religious, meaning of course that they do not affiliate with a particular religious institution or movement but still have some experience of the sacred. This association reflects modern shifts in Western understandings of religion since the Enlightenment and a tendency for many to distinguish between an inward and personal experience of the sacred (spirituality or mysticism) and allegiance to a particular form of organised religion (Carrette and King 2005). In a comparative context mysticism has come to denote those aspects of the various religious traditions which emphasise unmediated experience of oneness with the ultimate reality, however differently conceived. However, in the late twentieth century, the term of choice for those wishing to emphasise a more individualistic and less tradition-bound approach to the mystical, has been the notion of ‘spirituality’. This reflects cultural trends related to secularization and the ‘de-traditionalization’ of contemporary religious forms (as in much of ‘the New Age’) in the West. However, for the sake of understanding the trajectory of twentieth-century scholarship within this field of study, this chapter will generally refer to the phenomenon under discussion as ‘mysticism’ rather than ‘spirituality’ since this was the preferred term within scholarship until fairly recently. The contemporary preference for the language of ‘spirituality’ will be briefly addressed at the end of this chapter.

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Within Christian theological circles mysticism has often been viewed with great suspicion, being seen as a potential source of heresy and schism. If left unchecked, it has been argued, the unitive aspects of the mystical experience can lead to the adoption of heretical doctrines such as monism (everything is one), pantheism (everything is divine) and antinomianism (the claim to have transcended conventional moral guidelines). The mystic’s claim to have experienced an unmediated experience of the divine has also been seen by many theologians as a direct threat to the authority of the Church as the sole mediator between the divine and human realms. Nevertheless, many of the most revered figures in the Christian tradition have been described as mystics, representing a vibrant tradition of orthodox spiritual teachings. In the twentieth century, interest in the crosscultural dimensions of mysticism has also been seen by many as evidence of a spiritual common core at the centre of all world religions, providing a basis for inter-faith dialogue between religious traditions for some, and the hope of a truly globalised spirituality for others.

Origins of the term ‘mystical’

Although the category of mysticism is relatively modern, its adjectival form – ‘the mystical’ has a much longer history. In the pre-Christian era the Greek term mystikos was used by the various mystery religions of the early Roman Empire. These movements usually focused upon specific deities, such as the Goddess Isis, or the God Mithras. In this context, the mystical seems primarily to have been concerned with the secrecy of ritual practices performed by initiates of these movements. The secrecy of mystikos functioned to exclude outsiders. Etymologically, both ‘mysticism’ and ‘mystical’ seem to derive from the Greek muo, meaning to close. This derivation reflects the esoteric nature of the Graeco-Roman mystery religions. The mystical therefore denotes the practice of closing one’s eyes or of closing one’s lips (i.e. remaining silent). In the modern study of mysticism both relate to different ways of understanding the nature of mysticism. On the one hand the mystical is often taken to be an experience which goes beyond the range and scope of everyday sensory experiences (such as visions). On the other hand, mysticism is often associated with the ineffable – that about which one should not, or perhaps cannot, speak.

As Louis Bouyer (1990) has demonstrated, there are three aspects to the early Christian understanding of ‘the mystical’ – all of which remain intertwined in their usage:

1Hermeneutics – the mystical as the allegorical, spiritual or hidden meaning of scripture.

2Liturgy – the mystical as a description of the mysterious power of Christian liturgy, in particular the Eucharist as the act of communion with the Body and Blood of Christ.

3Experience – the mystical as an experiential knowledge of the divine.

Medieval conceptions of the mystical

In the sixth century ce we also find the development of the notion of a mystical theologyÂ

in the works of Pseudo-Dionysius (so named because of the false attribution of his works to Dionysius the Areopagite, a disciple of St Paul mentioned in Acts 17: 34). For Dionysius there are two fundamental ways of speaking about the divine: kataphatic or affirmative theology, which speaks of God in terms of positive attributes (‘God is good’, God is love’, etc.) and apophatic or negative theology, which takes seriously the mysterious, and indescribable

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nature of the divine. Negative theology, therefore, involves rejecting all affirmative statements about God and, for Dionysius, is also to be known as ‘mystical theology’.

The path of negation involves an ascent of the hierarchy of reality, until one reaches the ineffable and divine Oneness that is the source of all things. One can speak positively about the things that God creates but not about the transcendent Cause Himself. Indeed it is Dionysius who first coined the term ‘hierarchy’ to denote a graduated conception of creation with God at the summit and various angelic beings acting as mediators between the divine and human realms. However, for Dionysius positive and negative theologies are intrinsically related and cannot occur in isolation from each other. Negation cannot occur unless one first makes an affirmation. Similarly, affirmative statements about God must be negated at a higher level if one is to avoid making a false image out of one’s own limited conception of God. Negative theology is necessary therefore if we are to take seriously the transcendent nature of the divine. Moreover, as one ascends the celestial hierarchy towards God, words fall away, whilst at lower levels words become more and more effective in their representation of reality. The goal, argued Dionysius, was for the Christian to aspire to the highest realm and achieve a knowledge of God which left all conventional knowledge behind in a mystical ‘darkness of unknowing’:

We would be like sculptors who set out to carve a statue. They remove every obstacle to the pure view of the hidden image, and simply by this act of clearing aside (aphairesis, denial) they show up the beauty which is hidden.

(Mystical Theology Ch. 2, Pseudo-Dionysius, 1987: 138)

Negative theology, that is the idea that the divine being is too magnificent to be approached or described in any form, has come to be regarded as one of the defining features of mysticism and displays the unmistakable influence of Greek Neoplatonic philosophy. Medieval works such as the anonymously authored English text The Cloud of Unknowing, and the writings of figures such as the German Dominican Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) and the highly intellectual path of negation, involves the renunciation of all images of God as inadequate. God must always transcend the limitation of our human conception of the divine if He (She/ It) is truly the supreme Creator of everything. As Eckhart explains:

Unsophisticated teachers say that God is pure being. He is as far above being as the highest angel is above a gnat. I would be speaking incorrectly in calling God a being as if I called the sun pale or black. God is neither this nor that. A master says ‘Whoever imagines that he has understood God, if he knows anything, it is not God that he knows.’ However, in saying that God is not a being and is above being, I have not denied being to God, rather I have elevated it in him.

(German Sermon 9 in McGinn, 1986: 256)

Although ultimately rejecting all intellectual attempts to represent the divine, the popularity and practice of negative (apophatic) theology tended to presume significant theological training and a knowledge of Christian and neoplatonic philosophical arguments. To identify mysticism in general and Christian mysticism in particular exclusively with these apophatic trends would be to ignore the diversity of trends encompassed by this term. As well as the highly intellectual path of negation there were also more affective strands of Christian mysticism represented by figures like Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153), Hildegard