Short-Term Spiritual Engagement: The ‘Postmodern Spirituality’ in the Society of ‘Ontological Credit’

The aim of this article is to offer a theoretical contribution to the topic of “engaged spirituality”. First, I provide definitional and conceptual clarifications, hopefully useful in specifying what I call ‘postmodern spirituality’. In this way, we will also be able to better understand the specific features of “engaged spirituality”, at least from the theoretical perspective adopted here. I am proposing a conceptual integration that takes into account some frequently underestimated dimensions of the phenomenon. Particular attention will be paid to highlighting the defining dividing line between the transcendent and immanent spheres. I elucidate that I will focus exclusively on new forms of spirituality, not on spirituality in a broader sense. In the third section, I explain why I believe we can—applying some insights from Bell and Maffesoli—speak of a ‘postmodern spirituality’. The affirmation of a re-enchanted sacred sphere undergoing a process of “dionysification” is, in my view, the symbolic core of the imagery of new forms of spirituality. In the fourth section, through a comparative analysis, I will briefly highlight the main differences between archaic/premodern sacred and postmodern spirituality: here I will highlight a transition from the social condition of ‘ontological debt’—according to Gauchet—to that of ‘ontological credit’. In the fifth section I will finally address “engaged spirituality”, underlining how ‘postmodern spirituality’ can certainly be a vehicle for social transformation. However, for reasons I will try to clarify, the “engagement” of ‘postmodern spirituality’, while characterized by emotional intensity, simultaneously lacks temporal extension. In my conclusions I will propose to frame the engagement related to the ‘postmodern spirituality’ as a form of “inner-worldly mysticism” but characterized by a peculiar Gnostic component. The final goal is to propose an original theoretical speculation that, drawing also on concepts from Max Weber and Eric Voegelin, provides an analytical tool I hope will be helpful in contributing to the sociological study of the phenomenon of “engaged spirituality”.