The Nonformative Elements of Religious Life

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DOI: 10.1177/0037768609103359
2009 56: 237 Social Compass
Matthew Wood
Spirituality'' Paradigm
The Nonformative Elements of Religious Life: Questioning the ''Sociology of
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Matthew WOOD
The Nonformative Elements of Religious Life:
Questioning the Sociology of Spirituality
Paradigm
Sociological assertions of religious vitality in Euro-American societies have
developed a paradigm of spirituality in which, following earlier studies of the
New Age, a distinction is drawn between external authority and self-authority.
Methodologically and theoretically problematic, this paradigm diverts attention
from peoples social practices and interactions, especially in relation to multi-
ple religious authorities. Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork with an English
religious network, and building upon the work of Pierre Bourdieu, the author
considers situations in which multiple authorities tend to relativize each other.
Conceptualizing this in terms of nonformativenessthe lack of authorities
ability formatively to shape religious identity, habitus, and competition over
religious capitalallows a new understanding of individual secularization to
emerge that questions assertions of vitality.
Key words: authority Bourdieu New Age secularization social practice
spirituality
Les thses sociologiques de la vitalit religieuse dans les socits euro pennes et
amricaines ont fait appel un paradigme de la spiritualit qui, dans la conti-
nuit des premires tudes sur le New Age, tablit une distinction entre autorit
externe et auto-dtermination (self-authority). Problmatique tant dun point de
vue mthodologique que thorique, ce paradigme dtourne lattention des pra-
tiques et interactions sociales des individus, en particulier lorsquil sagit de
leur rapport avec des autorits religieuses multiples. Sappuyant sur des don-
nes issues dun terrain ethnographique dans un rseau religieux en Angleterre
et sur les travaux de Pierre Bourdieu, lauteur se penche sur des cas o des
autorits religieuses multiples tendent se relativiser mutuellement. Concep-
tualisant cela en termes de non formativitlincapacit des autorits faon-
ner de manire formelle lidentit et lhabitus religieux, ainsi que la comptition
pour le capital religieuxpermet une nouvelle comprhension de la scularisa-
tion individuelle qui remet en question les thses de la vitalit religieuse.
Mots-cls: autorit Bourdieu New Age pratiques sociales scularisation
spiritualit
238 Social Compass 56(2)
1. Religion and spirituality
In recent years, sociologists have increasingly turned to the concept of spirituality
in order to interpret religious changes in Euro-American societies. While some
(such as Roof, 1999; Wuthnow, 1998) explore the rise of spirituality within reli-
gious settings, and others (such as Furseth, 2005; Heelas and Woodhead, 2005)
emphasise a split between religious and spiritual settings, all agree that these
changes are underpinned by processes of subjectivization and detraditionaliza-
tion. For them, spirituality is marked by the according of primary importance to
individuals subjective experiences and uniqueness. However, the thesis devel-
oped by these scholars does not merely claim that spirituality recognises and
affirms subjectivity, but that it involves the enabling of individuals to conduct
their lives on the basis of their subjective experiences. It asserts that through
individuals exercise of self-reflexivity, their actions are made on the basis of
their own authority (even if this occurs by drawing from available authorities and
traditions): not only are discourses of self-authority prevalent, but self-authority
is the basis of social practice. A sociological distinction between spirituality and
(traditional) religion is therefore made on the basis of the relationship between
the self and power: religion is characterized by the self being subordinated to
external authorities, but in spirituality the self exercises its own authority. Nota-
bly, this assertion has received little sociological attention, yet it underpins
far-reaching claims about secularization.
To critically assess this paradigm and those claims, this paper draws out key
themes from an ethnographic study (199296) of a network of groups and events
in the English East Midlands, which included a meditation group, a monthly
fair (in which healers, spiritualists, diviners and others ran stalls, gave talks and
held workshops), and various channelling and healing workshops. This network,
which the majority of sociologists of religion would classify as an example
of the New Age or of spirituality characterized by self-authority (Heelas,
1996), I arbitrarily call the Nottinghamshire network, although it had no clear
boundaries. Research was also conducted with three groups partially intersect-
ing with this network in terms of participants, practices and beliefs: a spiritualist
healing circle, an occult study group, and an Anthroposophical group. Attention
was therefore intensively focused upon a relatively small number of people in
a specific geographical location, in order to enable an understanding of their
religious practices and beliefs as these were socially contextualized within their
everyday lives. Whilst there is not room in this paper to draw extensively upon
this research (for a detailed discussion, see Wood, 2007), its themes will be rep-
resented through consideration of one informant typical in terms of his biogra-
phy and relationship with authorities.
Michael was a white man in his early 40s who had set up the fair after
becoming involved with crystal healing. During one workshop, in which he
instructed six women and me in the use of crystals for healing, Michael said that
he uses crystals simply because it works. Since he did not know why crystals
healed or where their power came from, he said he found it difficult to teach
people when and how to use crystals, and that his aim was to show people how
to become more intuitive in their own use of crystals. Part of the workshop
involved a visualization exercise by which Michael led us to a box in an attic,
Wood: The Nonformative Elements of Religious Life 239
in which we were told we would find an object that could develop our sense
of ourselves. His instructions during this workshop were complemented by
his behaviour: seated on the floor while the rest of us sat around him on chairs,
he slowed his breathing and speech, and told us much about the properties of
particular crystals as he handled them. The workshop participants questioned
Michael on their specific properties and uses, to which he responded willingly
and in detail.
Michael also reported learning to use crystal energy from a spirit guide
with whom he had made contact at a spiritualist training circle attended some
years previously. Around that time, he had also been irregularly involved with
shamanic workshops led by a master shaman, learning techniques of medi-
tation and spirit channelling. Through these practices he had become increas-
ingly involved in the Nottinghamshire network by attending channelling events,
and creating and maintaining contact with spiritualists and healers. In interview,
Michael said that although he no longer attended the spiritualist circle and openly
expressed wariness of teachers (especially those who were not humble), he
had founded the religious fair in order to provide a space where people could
make contact with healers and teachers. Indeed, the fair provided him with such
opportunities, leading him to learn the practise of Reiki, which he was now inte-
grating with his crystal healing.
This short ethnographic example is suggestive for showing that, interwoven
with Michaels discourses concerning detachment from authorities and the valu-
ing of subjective experiences, were others about reliance upon, and submission
to, various social and supernatural authorities. Two points follow from this: it is
misleading to isolate certain words or phrases from respondents discourses, and
equally misleading to isolate discourses in general from the social practices and
interactions in which they occur. It is certainly true that discourses about spiritu-
ality and self-authority are prevalent in certain sections of contemporary Euro-
American society, but it is incumbent upon sociologists to study the production,
contestation and multiple meanings of these discourses in the context of peoples
practices and interactions, rather than simply noting their existence and accept-
ing them as an objective description of social reality. This social contextualiza-
tion is noticeably lacking in studies of spirituality and the New Age.
For example, the qualitative component of Heelas and Woodheads influ-
ential Kendal Project receives little mention in their argument about the nature
and growth of spirituality: most qualitative data about the holistic milieu are
confined to a mere four pages (2005: 269) of phrases from practitioners (or
their advertising leaflets), with no information about the wider lives and biog-
raphies of these people or the interactions in their groups. The fact that many of
these practitioners statements are didacticsuch as a yoga practitioners view
that what Im aiming for really is a union between body, mind and spirit; to
make people feel more integrated, and an astrologers view that If youve got
a sense of all the bits of you and how they can be integrated together, you can
actually move through and grow (2005: 26; emphases added)elicits no com-
ment from Heelas and Woodhead. Instead, they are only interested in identifying
discourses concerning the valuing of subjectivity, and then assuming this entails
that individuals act on the basis of their subjective experiences: It is a turn away
from life lived in terms of external or objective roles, duties and obligations,
and a turn towards life lived by reference to ones subjective experiences . . . if
I decide to heed those subjective states, to listen to what they are telling me, and
to act on their prompting . . . then I am turning away from life lived according
to external expectations, to life lived according to my own inner experience
(2005: 23; emphases added). In line with their wider argument, this statement
belies their claim that what they are interested in is merely a shift to subjectivity
as a cultural value (2005: 81). Whilst American studies of spirituality are more
concerned to explore peoples lives and biographies, even these tend to remain
focused at the level of discourses/speech, rather than interactions with others in
religious practices, as in the epistemological emphases on narrative and meaning
by Roof (1999) and Besecke (2005).
The besetting of the sociology of spirituality by these methodological and
epistemological problems is linked to its suffering from the theoretical presup-
position that a distinction can be drawn between external authority and self-
authority. Significantly, the paradigm operates largely within a Durkheimian
framework, usually mediated by Bellahs (Bellah et al., 1996) and Giddens
(1991) detraditionalization theses. Durkheims (1984 [1893]) view of humans
as composed of both individual and social elements points to his theoretical
difficulty in appreciating how each is fully constituted through the other.
1
As
Lukes (1982) points out, this leads to a situation in which society and the
individual are reified, and in which the focus of attention upon the relationship
between them leads to the neglect of power-relationships between social groups
and between individuals. This is reflected in the sociology of spiritualitys reduc-
tionist view that traditions oppose self-authority and dampen subjectivization,
such that in order to draw from them without compromising their authority or
uniqueness, individuals must maintain reflexive distance.
Consequently, in their analyses sociologists of spirituality have tended to
focus upon abstracted individuals and their discourses, and failed to explore how
subjective experiences arise through social practices and interactions rather than
pre-exist in a pristine state. In contrast to this perspective, longstanding social
scientific theories (including those of Mead, Foucault and Bourdieu) have dis-
cussed how subjectivity and self-conceptions are constituted through a complex
inter-relationship between individuals and their social milieu, which cannot be
reduced to either element, or to any clear distinction between them (see Adams,
2007; Wood, 2007: 4165).
2
In sum, the sociology of spirituality paradigm simply assumes the analytical
value of concepts such as self and tradition, rather than critically question-
ing these. This is a curious situation given the widespread sociological attention
given to, and raging debates surrounding, interpretations of power and selfhood.
A key theorist here is Pierre Bourdieu, whose work moves beyond the conception
of power as either something that is held over and exercised against subjects,
or something which subjects discover within themselves and attempt to express.
Bourdieu (1990) focuses on strategies, rather than choices, which subjects develop
in relation to their social contexts, conceptualizing these in terms of fields or are-
nas of competition over specific forms of capital. Subjects exist in these fields in
specific locations related to the classed nature of their social constitutionthat
is, in terms of their bodily and mental dispositions, or habitus. It is from this
perspective that the concept of nonformativeness can be developed.
2. Nonformative elements of the religious field
Bourdieus perspective encourages the contextualization of authorities and prac-
tices in the field in which they occur: to return to the Nottinghamshire network,
for a number of reasons its participants could be seen as acting within the wider
religious field. Firstly, they typically presented their life histories in terms of
a church upbringing being replaced by involvement in their current activities.
So, Michael had been brought up in the Church of England before becoming
involved with Transcendental Meditation and spiritualism, and then, after a
period of depression, leaving those groups and starting to practise various heal-
ing therapies, including crystals and Reiki, and founding the fair. Secondly, they
recognized that their practices and beliefs related in part to specific religious tra-
ditions or organizations. As already noted, the network partially overlapped with
spiritualist, pagan and Anthroposophical groups, but there was also awareness
of the negative views of their activities held by many Christians. The couple in
whose house the meditation group was held were initially wary in case I was a
Christian come to expose the group. Thirdly, in common with the wider field,
participants in the network shared an assumption that was a pre-condition for
activity in this field, namely the existence and efficacy of supernatural entities
and powers (Bourdieu, 1991). For these reasons, it is crucial that practices in the
Nottinghamshire network are conceptually located within, not separated from,
the religious field.
As Wacquant (1992: 17) explains, a field is a patterned system of objec-
tive forces (much in the manner of a magnetic field), a relational configuration
endowed with a specific gravity which it imposes on all the objects and agents
which enter it. It is here that the peculiarities of the Nottinghamshire network
become apparent, for its participants could not be described as having a specific
religious habitus or identity, a specific position upon the basis of which they
competed with others. What was significant was not that they rejected exter-
nal authorities in favour of their own authority, but that they developed rela-
tionships with many authorities from a diversity of sources. It has been shown
how Michael was involved, often simultaneously, with a variety of practices and
groups, thus with teachers and leaders with backgrounds and training in differ-
ent traditions. Yet this did not lead to any strong self-identification by him with
any of these or with any amalgam of them, even if they helped to legitimize
his healing or networking activities, nor to any assertion that his identity was
uniquely himself. Sociologists of spirituality have repeatedly drawn attention to
Bellah et al.s (1996: 221; emphasis added) report that one respondent in their
1985 study actually named her religion (she calls it her faith) after herself . . .
Sheilaism, but they have failed to point out that this was her way of interpret-
ing her belief in God: for her, Sheilaism meant just try to love yourself and
be gentle with yourself. You know, I guess, take care of each other. I think He
would want us to take care of each other. This statement not only indicates the
fallacy of theoretically isolating subjectivity, but also, given its Christian reso-
nances, supports the position that such experiences must be situated within the
wider religious field. For those in the Nottinghamshire network, networking was
used as a strategy to continually bring them into contact with new authorities
within the religious field, whilst maintaining longstanding relationships with
others. They were in fact characterized by the extent to which these authorities
were unable to shape their habitus, identities or social organizations in a for-
mative manner. This multiplicity of authorities and their sources meant that
they tended to relativize each other, such that they tended to act in what may be
termed a nonformative manner.
Resulting from this nonformativeness was the fact that those in the network
were not involved in competing with each other, or with others in the wider
field, for religious capital, such as for control over access to mastery in religious
practices, or to supernatural entities or powers. This is not to say that teach-
ers and practitioners did not disseminate their expertise, as in Michaels crystal
healing workshops, but that claims of legitimacy did not involve competition
and did not result in structured relationships with others. Peoples interactions
with these authorities took place within a context of contemporaneous inter-
action with other authorities from diverse sources, such that they did not result
in the establishment of followers or disciples, or the establishment of a specific
habitus or identity, even if the taught practices were pursued on a regular basis.
Indeed, like Michael, such teachers and practitioners did not seek any such con-
sequences, being largely uninterested in maintaining contact with those they had
instructed.
Those social organizations that did exist in the network were marked by the
proliferation and acceptance of authorities from diverse sources. Evidently so
in the fair, in the meditation group this was demonstrated by the importance
of a lengthy socializing period after the relatively short meditation ritual. Dur-
ing this period, participants discussed other religious practices and groups with
which they were involved, and openly voiced their own interpretations of, and
disagreements with, that ritual, although these were not made on the basis of any
underlying common positions and did not lead to calls for the ritual to be altered.
This lack of competition in the network was particularly evidenced by a marked
lack of rivalry and gossip. At first, I believed this was due to their covert nature,
but as fieldwork progressed (and as comparisons were made with overlapping
organizations) their absence became clearer.
This is not a situation for which Bourdieus understanding of fields is able
to account. The idea that individuals and groups without a concomitant habitus
may persist in a field full of authorities seems inimical to his understanding, yet
this situation was found repeatedly amongst the groups and people in the net-
work.
3
Ironically, it is Bourdieus less sophisticated (Verter, 2003) early analysis
of religion that perhaps comes closest to recognizing the possibility of such a
situation, for he makes reference to magic or sorcery as a dominated position
in the structure of relations of symbolic power, that is, in the system of relations
between the systems of practices and beliefs belonging to a determined social
formation (Bourdieu, 1991 [1971]: 12; emphases added). Contradictorily, how-
ever, Bourdieu also asserts that sorcerers remain active participants in the strug-
gles of the religious field, since they deliberately contest religious monopoly
by juxtaposing the sacred and the profane, and this [c]ompetition converges
with the demand of the inferior groups or classes . . . who provide the sorcerers
clientele, so as to impose on the church the ritualization of religious practice
and the canonization of popular beliefs (1991: 13, 30). Bourdieus theory of
practice must therefore be amended, to allow for the possibility of people within
a field who do not play the game of that field in the sense of competing for
capital on the basis of a specific location and its associated habitus.
4
The argument that certain areas within the religious field are characterized by
nonformativeness suggests that the rest of the field is characterized by formative-
ness, in which authorities tend to shape peoples and organizations subjective iden-
tities and habitus in a formative manner. Or, to avoid unwarranted objectifications,
different areas of the religious field are relatively more formative or nonformative:
these constitute one dimension of elements across the religious field. Relative
formativeness was found within those groups that partially overlapped with the
Nottinghamshire network in terms of events, ideas and practices. For example,
in the occult study group authorities played three related roles. Firstly, authorities
structured legitimation, providing common standards for practice, belief, dialogue
and contestation. Participants tended to base many of their practices (and disagree-
ments over these, unlike those in the meditation group) upon common positions
such as belief in a god and goddess, and in secret knowledge that was seen as
having been passed down through Western esoteric traditions. Secondly, authori-
ties managed experiences, especially through what may be called control over the
means of possession. Ritual celebrations and the passing on of esoteric knowl-
edge took place in regularly meeting small groups in which one or two recognized
leaders played relatively strong roles. Thirdly, authorities established careers of
participation that enabled those involved to be classified, assessed and treated
in appropriate ways. There was much talk in this group of certain people being
experts or leaders and others being merely learners, leading to structured
relationships that were absent within the Nottinghamshire network.
Thus, although there were different authorities in this local pagan scene,
based upon various groups and sources of expertise, nevertheless there was
amongst participants a relatively strong pagan identity, core beliefs, sense of
boundaries, sense of how their practices and rituals should be conducted, and
presence of gossip and rivalryas other ethnographic studies of paganism have
demonstrated (for example, Magliocco, 2004), and in contrast to the classifica-
tion of paganism in terms of self-authority (Heelas, 1996). The same point may
be made in response to those sociologists of spirituality who assert that there
has been a shift to self-authority amongst some Christians, since, like those who
attend pagan groups, churchgoers are also characterized by formative relation-
ships to (often multiple) religious authorities. For example, Yip (2002) selec-
tively focuses on nonheterosexual Christians references to the self, not on their
participation in a variety of Christian groups, but his own evidence on the latter
shows that it is formative in producing a strong sense of Christian identity and
ritual that provides common ground for contestations regarding sexuality.
This interpretation of the Nottinghamshire network may be defended against
Aupers and Houtmans (2006) view of the New Age which argues, alongside
Heelas (1996) and Hanegraaff (1996), that New Age spirituality has an ideo-
logical coherence, but also, against most scholars of the New Age, that social
authorities (such as teachers at New Age centres) play a formative role in
socialising people into this ideology of self-spirituality. Whilst this focus is a
marked improvement upon the lack of sociological awareness of the existence
of social authorities in New Age studies, Aupers and Houtmans key claim that
self-spirituality is socially transmitted and reinforced is undermined by the fact
that their research rests primarily upon interviews with such teachers, rather than
those they teach. In fact, what evidence they do present about those taught
namely, interviews with four employees who participated in a Dutch companys
courses run by such teachers (in comparison with interviews with three who had
not done so)merely indicates an increased awareness of emotions and the
breakdown of the modern separation between private and public life, but hardly
a shift towards self-spirituality (2006: 216).
Yet is it even the case that the teachers can be described as New Agers,
with a relatively strong sense of identity and possession/competition over capi-
tal? Firstly, the appellation New Age to these teachers and their centres seems
to be primarily Aupers and Houtmans own, rather than an emic marker of
identity (see Sutcliffe, 2003). Secondly, these teachers discourses in interview
seem far too vague to constitute a specific, coherent religious ideology, instead
revolving around ideas about spirituality, the god within, self-reliance and well-
being. In the Nottinghamshire network, Michael was typical for his ambiva-
lence regarding any identity, worldview or set of beliefs. Although elements of
Aupers and Houtmans religious ideology surfaced in his and other participants
discourses, there was also considerable recognition and valuing of religious tra-
ditions, and of external beings of great authorityas in his spirit guide and
channellers Ascended Masters, both of which Michael recognised might arise
from a persons higher self, although this was not always the case (and he was
not particularly interested in whether or not in fact it was the case). Despite their
recognition of the importance of social authorities, Aupers and Houtman there-
fore replicate the sociological naivety of which they accuse other scholars of the
New Age, by failing to investigate social practices and interactions (and, impor-
tantly, discourses as they arise and feature in these), instead basing their view of
these social phenomena upon official discourses.
3. Partial individual secularization
A key argument in the sociology of spirituality paradigm is the contestation of
the orthodox thesis of secularization: if there is a fundamental shift from religion
to spirituality, then the decline of the former may not be applicable to the latter.
Hence Heelas and Woodheads (2005: 149) tentative claim for a Euro- American
spiritual revolution and Roofs (1999: 294314) assertions of spiritual revi-
talization in American religion. Criticisms of this paradigm therefore bear
upon debates about secularization; specifically, it is important to explore what
is revealed about processes of secularization on the basis of the existence (and
perhaps spread) of nonformative regions of the religious field.
In contrast to studies of secularization that tended to focus on the loss of
religious institutions public significance, Dobbelaere (2002: 25) argues that
attention should also be paid to individual secularization: the loss of religious
values, beliefs and practices in individual behaviour. But to date, such attention
has primarily focused on documenting these changes at a societal level, such as
the decline in rates of individual churchgoing or belief in Christian tenets, rather
than in terms of individuals biographical experiences of secularization. This is
relevant since study of the Nottinghamshire network showed that the majority
of participants had similar religious biographies to Michaels: participation in
Christian churches until early adulthood, sometimes followed by involvement
with those religious traditions (such as spiritualism) which lay on the periphery
of the network, and subsequent participation within the relatively nonformative
network. This experience of individual secularization in terms of de-churching
is surely an issue of crucial importance for understanding such peoples current
practices, yet it is largely neglected by scholars.
For Heelas and Woodhead (2005: 88110) the key variables associated with
participation in the holistic milieu are gender, education, occupation and age:
they find that a typical participant is a well educated, middle-aged woman who
works in a caring profession, for such people have been primed to the rela-
tional subjectivism of the milieu by their gender role and their occupational
contact with the wellbeing culture, as well as having the time to pursue such
interests. The growth of spirituality is therefore seen as the result of a process of
subjectivization rather than secularization. However, this assertion is made on
the basis of assumptions about factors common to many in the milieu uncovered
by the questionnaire surveys, rather than being demonstrated by investigating
peoples lives in context. The only time such a life is presented in their book to
demonstrate that involvement with the holistic milieu comes about as a result
of these factors, it is a hypothetical example (2005: 103). However, information
about the past religiosity of holistic milieu practitioners is available from the
Kendal Project questionnaire dataset. This shows that (if non-responses are omit-
ted) a significant majority, 74 per cent, used to attend church regularly but no
longer do so.
5
Previous regular churchgoing is therefore a more significant factor
than those factors focused upon by Heelas and Woodhead. This is true even for
gender: women constitute four-fifths of people in their milieu (2005: 945), this
proportion therefore being drawn from about half of the general population; but
the nearly-equally sized proportion (around three-quarters) of previous regular
churchgoers in their milieu is drawn from a proportion of the general population
far smaller than a half, probably around a third.
6

In order to take this argument further, information is needed about the nature
of peoples involvement with such practices as found in the Nottinghamshire
network. As shown, this is largely absent in sociologies of spirituality due to
their lack of contextualization of peoples attitudes and discourses. This paper
has argued for an interpretation of peoples involvement in the Nottinghamshire
network in terms of nonformativeness: in other words, that such peoples expe-
riences of de-socialization from their church upbringing had not resulted in re-
socialization into a new sense of spiritual identity or sense of belonging. These
peoples experiences should therefore be interpreted as experiences of individual
secularization rather than subjectivization. However, the fact that such people
remained involved with authorities in the religious field, albeit in a nonformative
manner, is significant: unlike the majority of those who become de-churched,
their experience had not led to the loss of involvement in the religious field.
7

Their process of individual secularization had therefore been curtailed but not
reversed: as a result of partial individual secularization, they remained in the
field but did not play the game of the field.
On the basis of this interpretation, the growth of contexts such as the
Nottinghamshire network is precisely what might be expected to occur given
widespread individual secularization. Furthermore, if women are more likely
than men to be involved in relatively nonformative religious contexts, this is
best explained by the fact that they are much more likely than men to have been
regular churchgoers, and thus to have experienced individual secularization, in
the first place (Brown, 2001). With large numbers of individuals becoming de-
churched and losing their religious sensibility, some will experience this process
to a greater degree than others.
8
Thus, it is likely that not only will some indi-
viduals remain weakly attached to the church or Christian culture from which
they are experiencing secularizationperhaps leading to the sorts of patterns
identified by Hervieu-Lger (2000) and Davie (2000)but also that others will
become involved with other authorities in the religious field. Both situations
will tend to involve nonformative relations with religious authorities, result-
ing in little sense of religious identity, belonging or competition over religious
capital.
In so far as the above expectations are met, they indicate a stronger defence
of the secularization thesis than has hitherto been made. Voas and Bruce (2007:
44) defend an orthodox thesis on the basis that only a minority of those involved
with the holistic milieu truly regard such activities as sacred, the growth of
this milieu therefore being a possible epiphenomenon of secularisation. But as
this paper has argued, an adequate sociological account of such phenomena can
only be made on the basis of empirical research into the nature of peoples prac-
tices and interactions, especially with social authorities. This points towards a
stronger defence of the orthodox thesis, because by demonstrating the relatively
nonformative nature of practices and interactions in these regions, it indicates
instead that they are a consequence of processes of individual secularization
even for those who regard such activities as sacred. Whether small or large,
the growth of relatively nonformative networks does not result from spiritual
revitalization or subjectivization, but from secularization. Sociologists of reli-
gion should therefore not only be wary of amending or rejecting the theory of
secularization, but also pay greater attention to the variety of the effects of secu-
larization on the religious field. Not only does it affect the scope and nature of
religious organizations, but it plays a role in re-structuring the elements across
that field: by encouraging the growth of nonformative elements, secularization
becomes intrinsically combined with religiousness itself.
NOTES
1.
The same is true of Simmels sociology, which represents a subsidiary theoretical
underpinning of the sociology of spirituality (as in Flanagan, 2007; Varga, 2007): as
Weber recognized, Simmel developed an essentialist conception of the self (Marshall,
1982: 36).
2.
Guest moves close to this view by arguing that spirituality is not the preserve of
autonomous individuals; it is subject to a broader social distribution of power (2007:
182), but (like Roof and Besecke) remains tied to a (weak) subjectivisation thesis in
which individuals are seen as seeking their own meaning and indulging their subjective
predilections through organizations and within external constraint[s], thus marking a
shift from institutionalized religion to a detraditionalised context of spirituality (2007:
18990).
3.
Theories of postmodernity have arisen in part due to recognition of the supposed loss
of authority of orthodox traditions or sources of power but, like the sociology of spiritual-
ity, tend to focus upon self-authority rather than multiple authorities (as in Lyon, 2000).
4.
For a Bourdieuian analysis of another individual from this network, see Wood and
Bunn, 2009.
5.
http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/projects/ieppp/kendal/methods.htm (accessed 4 April 2008):
variable 379, 37 non-responses out of 237.
6.
Given the aforementioned lack of sociological attention to individuals experiences
of secularization, precise data are not readily available for this proportion, although the
2001 Scottish Social Attitudes Survey shows that the figure for Scotland was 38 per cent
(Glendinning and Bruce, 2006: 402).
7.
Such people are a minority compared to the numbers who have been de-churched in
Britain since the 1950s (Voas and Bruce, 2007).
8.
Why this should be the case is beyond the scope of this paper.
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Matthew WOOD is Lecturer in Sociology at Queens University Belfast
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BT7 1NN, United Kingdom. [email: m.wood@qub.ac.uk]

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