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The Religion of the Heart: Self, Solidarity, and the Sacred in Romantic Liberal Modernity

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The Religion of the Heart: Self, Solidarity, and the Sacred in Romantic Liberal Modernity THE RELIGION OF THE HEART: SELF, SOLIDARITY, AND THE SACRED IN ROMANTIC LIBERAL MODERNITY by Galen Watts A thesis submitted to the Department of Cultural Studies In conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada (June, 2020) Copyright ©Galen Watts, 2020 Abstract North Americans and Western Europeans increasingly prefer “spirituality” to “religion.” In response to this “spiritual turn,” a voluminous literature has emerged across the human sciences. Yet the study of spirituality remains rife with discord and fragmentation. This study seeks to clarify the nature of these debates, as well as advance a substantive position within them. In Part I, following in the footsteps of contemporary cultural sociologists, I contend that the spiritual turn signals the ascent of an enduring cultural structure in Western modernity, which I call the religion of the heart. I draw from a wide array of sociological and historical studies, supplementing these with my own empirical research, in order to offer a brief history of this religious tradition, and delineate its core tenets. In Part II, I synthesize the existing scholarship on “spirituality,” advancing a genealogy of the spiritual turn since the 1960s. I maintain that the religion of the heart holds deep elective affinities with the romantic liberal social imaginary that crystallized in popular consciousness during this era and transformed the institutional spheres of Western liberal democracies, eventually giving birth to a new social order—romantic liberal modernity. In Part III, I illuminate the striking degree to which academic debates about the religion of the heart, or “spirituality,” track debates about romantic liberal modernity, delineating the social-cum-political theoretical traditions that scholars have drawn upon to criticize both. I then draw from the Durkheimian tradition in order to mount a defense of the animating ideals of romantic liberalism, challenge these traditions’ chief theoretical and normative presuppositions, and flag the concerns critics raise that warrant further empirical investigation. In Part IV, I advance institutional ethnographies of three sites where the religion of the heart is institutionalized in a specific discursive form as a means of assessing the validity of these concerns. I conclude that while critics may have reason to disparage both the religion of the heart, and romantic liberal modernity more generally, the reality is far more complex than their critiques suggest— and more importantly, far less hopeless. ii Acknowledgements The debts I owe for the completion of this study are many—too many, unfortunately, for me to recount in full. Alas, such is the nature of scholarship; we stand on the backs of so many giants that it becomes near impossible to name them all. I will therefore give thanks to those who most readily come to mind, and hope the rest will not be offended by my lapses in memory. First and foremost, I must thank my informants. I am deeply grateful to all those who sat down with me for an interview, formal or informal, allowing me into your life worlds. I have been inspired by your willingness to share with me your innermost thoughts and experiences, and to reflect candidly on the probing questions I posed. I gained far more from our conversations than I could have known. I have had the extreme fortune of working, and conversing, with an array of brilliant scholars that, in both direct and indirect ways, have made me a much better academic than I otherwise would have been. Thanks, must especially go to my supervisor, Will Kymlicka, who generously took over the job mid-way through my doctorate—something few would do so gracefully—and whose breadth of knowledge and intellectual depth continue to astound and inspire me. Significant thanks must also go to the rest of my doctoral committee: Simon Coleman and Sharday Mosurinjohn. Simon was kind enough to give up his time to oversee my fieldwork and teach me much about the nature of social research, not to mention tolerate my musings during our weekly meetings (which I have no doubt regularly set off his anthropological alarm bells). He also munificently let me audit his course at the University of Toronto, where I learned about the anthropology of Christianity and the importance of language in neo-Pentecostal thought. Sharday, for her part, has been a friend and stimulating conversation partner for some time, one that I am grateful to have in my corner. Finally, thank you to both Lori Beaman and Richard Ascough for their searching and acute comments and queries during my doctoral examination. I would also like to thank Dick Houtman, who has been immensely helpful since we first met at a SSSR conference in Las Vegas (of all places!). Dick kindly invited me to present my work to him and his colleagues at the Centre for Sociological Research at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven while I was living in Cambridge—an experience I gained much from. Moreover, he read significant portions of early drafts of this study, always offering incisive commentary in turn, and helping me to clarify issues that I had left obscure. Next, I would like to highlight the contributions of Matthew McManus and Craig Martin who courageously read through substantial percentages of a draft of the thesis, offering encouraging feedback along with fair criticism. Others who read and offered their comments on early drafts of specific chapters include (in alphabetical order): Nancy T. Ammerman, Polina Batanova, Peter Beyer, Mark S. Cladis, Liza Cortois, Robert C. Fuller, James Laidlaw, Alasdair Lockhart, Anna Halafoff, Gillian McCann, Hugh iii McLeod, Deborah Orr, Bill Parsons, Sam Reimer, Leigh Eric Schmidt, Tim Stacey, Riyaz Timol, Steven M. Tipton, Paul Tromp, C. Travis Webb, and Linda Woodhead. This study is immeasurably improved as a result of their contributions. Still, I have no doubt that they, along with many others, will find it lacking in important respects. For these errors and omissions, I take full responsibility. I am especially beholden to the inimitable James Miller, my first supervisor. James and I co- taught two fourth-year seminars in the Religious Studies Department at Queen’s University—experiences that did much to stimulate and refine my thinking about the shift from “religion” to “spirituality.” But more importantly, it was James who gave me the freedom to pursue my intellectual interests widely, without concern for disciplinary boundaries or academic conventions. Moreover, he never scolded me for having ambition, but instead just encouraged me to work hard. For this, and much much more, I am deeply grateful. I would like to single out two people who have been instrumental to my academic career: Jacqueline Davies and Christine Sypnowich. I have learned much from Jackie, both by listening to her lectures as an undergraduate philosophy student, and chatting with her over coffee. She skillfully balances being both a formidable debater as well as a compassionate confidant, a combination I continue to aspire to yet consistently fail to achieve. Christine has long inspired me with her ability to combine erudition, analytical acumen, humility, and genuine kindness in a single character. Those of us who have had the privilege of being her students are much the better for it. Additionally, she did me the great favour of allowing me to teach in Queen’s Philosophy Department in the final year of my PhD—an opportunity I thoroughly relished. During 2017-2018 I had the privilege of studying in the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto, where I was privy to a number of rousing conversations and graduate seminars, which served instrumental to my research. I would like to thank Girish Daswani and Valentina Napolitano for allowing me to take their anthropology of subjectivity course in the Anthropology Department, and Randal Contreras for allowing me to audit his ethnography course in the Sociology Department. I would also like to thank Ann Mullen, for letting me audit her sociology of culture course, as well as serve as a research assistant for her during the summer of 2018. I learned much from these experiences. During the Lent term of 2019 I had the great fortune of studying in the Faculty of Divinity at Cambridge University. For this, I am ever grateful to Tim Jenkins, who sponsored my trip and supervised my stay. It was a wonderful privilege (not to mention incredibly daunting) to sit with Tim every week and discuss my work-in-progress. While I must apologize to him for failing to become a thoroughbred social anthropologist by the end of our tenure together, I can attest that, despite all appearances to the contrary, I learned a great deal from our conversations. I must also give thanks to Fraser Watts (no relation), who for years has served as an intellectual mentor of sorts, not to mention been a close friend. I look back on the iv time we spent together in Cambridge, and the conversations we shared, very fondly. And with Cambridge in mind, I am obliged to mention spirited exchanges with Nick Moire, Craig Bartholomew, and Rowan Williams (the last of whose generous comments on the paper I gave at the 2019 meeting of the Epiphany Philosophers I will not soon forget). This study has also significantly benefitted from the many opportunities I have had to present my work at conferences and academic events around the world. These include: in 2017, the annual meeting of the Canadian Society for the Study of Religion, the
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