Post-Secular Religious Practices

POST-SECULAR RELIGIOUS PRACTICES POST-SECULAR RELIGIOUS PRACTICES Based on papers read at the symposium on Post-Secular Religious Practices held at Åbo/Turku, Finland, on 15–17 June 2011 Edited by Tore Ahlbäck Editorial Assistant Björn Dahla Published by the Donner Institute for Research in Religious and Cultural History Åbo/Turku, Finland Distributed by BTJ Finland Editorial secretary Maria Vasenkari Linguistic editing Sarah Bannock ISSN 0582-3226 ISBN 978-952-12-2700-4 Printed in Finland by Vammalan kirjapaino Sastamala 2012 Editorial note he theme chosen for the Donner Institute 22nd Symposium, 15–17 June T2011 in Åbo/Turku, Finland, was Post-secular religious practices. The field we were interested in had so far not received a set terminology. Against this background, we accordingly suggested a stipulative definition in our Call for papers: ‘A post-secular society is that which combines a renewed openness to questions of the spirit with the habit of critical enquiry.’ As noticed in our Call for papers, people today more often take responsi- bility for regulating their lives the best they can in order to become and stay healthy, efficient, moral and flexible actors both in their private lives and in the labour market. A common feature of many religious and spiritual practices is the invitation to work with oneself, more specifically with one’s mind, body and spirit, as well as with one’s emotions, goals, values and relations. This late modern orientation has been named, ‘the subjective or expressive turn of culture’. As a consequence, many people are today increasingly seek- ing a non-dualistic or holistic understanding of life and the human being, an understanding that would bring mind and body, or ‘nature’ and ‘spirit’, in unity. Some analyses of post-secular urban culture have depicted it in critical terms of, for instance, a disorienting character or disconnectedness, a lack of subjectivity or authenticity, a glorification of the superficial or as fragmentary, diffuse, and disassociated. This condition has been insightfully characterized as becoming ‘exhausted of being oneself’. The papers that were presented at the symposium did not form a consistent whole, but were rather a fairly heterogenous collection of views on different aspects of Post-secular religious practices. Since the subject is new nothing else was to be expected. This heterogeneity also clearly appeared in our Call for papers: ‘We welcome papers dealing theoretically with secularization and post-secularity in relation to relevant post-secular religious practices such as, for example, Mindfulness, Yoga, Charismatic healing, Meditation and other spiritual health and well-being practices.’ I am nevertheless convinced that the present conference proceedings will awaken interest—as every pioneer act does. As if this was not enough, this is also the first volume in the series Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis that is published simultaneously both in printed and digital form. 5 Table of contents Veikko Anttonen Making space for the ‘post-secular’ in religious studies 11 Nina Björkman A pure mind and a healthy body: an Islamic perspective 15 Måns Broo Yoga practices as identity capital: preliminary notes from Turku, Finland 24 Abby Day Non-religious Christians 35 Liselotte Frisk The practice of mindfulness: from Buddhism to secular mainstream in a post-secular society 48 Ingvild Sælid Gilhus Post-secular religion and the therapeutic turn: three Norwegian examples 62 Céline Grünhagen Healing chants and Singing Hospitals: towards an analysis of the implementation of spiritual practices as therapeutic means 76 Tina Hamrin-Dahl The philosophy of nature as a springboard into social realism: about Ibsen’s Emperor and Galilean and a post-secular interpretation of the drama by Hilda Hellwig 89 Anne-Christine Hornborg ‘Are you content with being just ordinary? Or do you wish to make progress and be outstanding?’ New ritual practices in contemporary Sweden 111 Tuija Hovi Clinical services instead of sermons 128 Anne Kalvig Facing suffering and death: alternative therapy as post-secular religious practice 145 Maria Kapsali Body–mind unity and the spiritual dimension of Modern Postural Yoga 165 Christiane Königstedt Religio-spiritual strategies of self-help and empowerment in everyday life: selected cases of spirituality in Germany 178 Mika Lassander & Peik Ingman Exploring the social without a separate domain for religion: on actor-network theory and religion 201 Maria Leppäkari Contesting spiritual dimensions of health: salutogenic approaches to post-secular quests for quality of life 218 Cecilia Melder The epidemiology of lost meaning: a study in the psychology of religion and existential public health 237 Lisbeth Mikaelsson Pilgrimage as post-secular therapy 259 Urszula Pękala Post-secular religious practices entering traditional religion 274 Outi Pohjanheimo The enrichment of magical thinking through practices among Reiki self-healers 289 Martin Radermacher Devotional fitness: aspects of a contemporary religious system 313 Tommy Ramstedt Making sense of personal and global problems: an analysis of the writings and lectures of Rauni-Leena Luukanen-Kilde 344 Olle Sundström Is the shaman indeed risen in post-Soviet Siberia? 350 Teemu Taira Atheist spirituality: a follow on from New Atheism? 388 Claus Tirel Two ways to get an Integral Theory: Ken Wilber’s method of integration 405 Laura Wickström Contemporary environmentalism as a current of spiritual post-secular practice 419 Biographical notes 433 VEIKKO AnttONEN Making space for the ’post-secular’ in religious studies am greatly honoured to have the opportunity to say a few words at the open- ing of the annual Donner Institute Conference, which this year focuses on I post-secular religious practices.* Of course this challenging task made me think about my own connection to the notion of the secular, as well as its corollary, ’post-secular’. During the past twenty-five years, I have been working on the cultural logic of terms denoting ‘the sacred’. My sincere wish has been to unravel both cultural and cognitive mechanisms by which the domains of the religious and the secular are established in social life in order to create distinctions, boundaries and behavioural rules for observing them. From the outset, the theory that I have proposed entails that the element of ‘religion’ or ‘the sacred’ is an inextricable ingredient in human societies, giving shape to diverse individual and culturally shared religious formations and mental landscapes. Even though I have theorised the sacred more in reference to ver- nacular cultures rather than theological religions, my primary goal has been to break open the fuzzy boundaries used to constitute the domain of the secular rather than to explore religion or the sacred per se. My methodological choices have been motivated by a conviction according to which the parameters forming a religion in a specific cultural setting need to be viewed in close connection with its counter-domain, ‘non-religion’. The parameters of faith are always in some specific relationship with ideas, ideologies, philosophies and political programmes underlying the domain of the secular. I have de- fined the sacred as a ‘categorical boundary to set things with non-negotiable value apart from things whose value is based on continuous transactions’. By means of this definition I have wanted to emphasise and point out that people in general have not only a culturally established inclination, but also an in- nate capacity to participate in distinct sacred-making activities and processes of signification according to paradigms given by the belief systems to which they are committed, be they religious, national or ideological (Anttonen 2000: 280–1). * This paper is based on the words of welcome on 15 June 2011. Veikko Anttonen is Professor of Comparative Religion at the University of Turku. 11 VEIKKO ANTTONEN In close connection with my methodological choices, Kim Knott has suggested that the contours, beliefs, practices and culture of the secular have hardly begun to be researched (Knott 2010). We still need to flesh out the hidden mechanisms which create the boundary space between the domains of religion and non-religion and bring them into close interaction with each other in varying formations and discursive practices. By developing tools, methods and models for analysing the relationship between the ‘religious’ and the ‘secular’, scholars in the field of religious studies are better equipped to theorise these domains in juxtaposition with each other and to re-engage the study of religion with other disciplines (see Knott 2010:133). I am tempted to think that otherwise the whole enterprise of distinguishing certain religious practices and subsuming them in the corollary category of the ‘post-secular’ would be methodologically untenable. There are various scholars of religion who have made important contri- butions to our understanding of the relationship between the two domains. Being one among the many, Timothy Fitzgerald identifies ‘religion’ and the ‘secular’ as being mutually conditioned, oppositional concepts which in a way similar to concepts such as ‘economics’ and ‘politics’, emerge in the context of western Enlightenment and colonialist discourse. Fitzgerald maintains that religion’s other, the category of non-religion, appeared discursively in the guises of concepts such as ‘superstition’, the ‘profane’, the ‘secular’ and ‘secu- larism’ (Fitzgerald 2007a, 2007b). Our approaches and discourses

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