PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

Since the enormous shift in the everyday semantic from “religion” to “spirituality” has also affected the terminology of the scientific study of religion, it appears necessary to explain the position taken in the Bielefeld-based Cross-cultural Study on “Spirituality” to the question: Should ‘spirituality’ be used as scientific concept? Attempts to substitute religion with spirituality are critically discussed in this chapter. To ground and inspire reflection and suggest a conceptu-al framework for the chapters of this book, we refer to classics in philosophy, psy-chology and sociology of religion such as Schleiermacher, James, Troeltsch, Tillich and Luckmann. Thus the conclusion of this chapter is twofold: first, we call into question the necessity of establishing ‘spirituality’ as scientific concept (etic term) in contrast to or as substitute for ‘religion’; instead, we argue that the concept of religion is sufficient, because spirituality can be understood as privatized, experience-oriented religion. Second, we strongly suggest taking the self-attribution as “spiritual” very seriously as emic term and thus open the perspective for the chapters to follow, which are committed to the thoroughgoing empirical study of “spirituality” as self-description of the persons who identify themselves by that term, whether in conjunction with religion or not.