Being Different from Religion : Distance from Religious Organizations and its Role for Czech Spiritual Seekers
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| Year of publication | 2011 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Citation | |
| Description | The paper was based on analysis of emic discourses about religion and religious organizations in periodicals available in Czech local "esoteric" shops or alternative health methods shops. This analysis aimed to scrutinize a frequent supposition that spiritual seekers have a suspicious or reserved attitude to established religions or churches, the attitude resulting from their anti-dogmatism and anti-authoritarianism (Heelas 1996) or from significant differences between the worlds of the holistic milieu and of the congregational domain (Heelas,Woodhead 2005). It was primarily concerned with a detailed analysis of the spiritual seekers' expressions of self-distinction from religion, and of roles and functions these statements play within discourses of the analyzed periodicals. Consequently,the following questions were discussed: Can we find a shared discourse about religion/religious organizations in the above mentioned periodicals? What role do the anti-religious statements play within this discourse (or discourses) and in what contexts and for what aims are they used as a meaningful language tool? Are they important for presentation of identity (identities) of spiritual seekers? What alternative conceptualizations of the relation between spiritual seeking and membership of a religious organization can be found and in what ways are they justified? |