http://hdl.handle.net/2144/11 Sun, 19 May 2013 21:22:08 GMT 2013-05-19T21:22:08Z http://hdl.handle.net/2144/5449 Spiritual but not Religious?: Beyond Binary Choices in the Study of Religion Ammerman, Nancy T. "Spirituality" has often been framed in social science research as an alternative to organized "religion," implicitly or explicitly extending theoretical arguments about the privatization of religion. This article uses in-depth qualitative data from a religiously-diverse U.S. sample to argue that this either-or distinction not only fails to capture the empirical reality of American religion, but it does not do justice to the complexity of spirituality itself. An inductive discursive analysis reveals four primary cultural "packages," that is, ways in which the meaning of spirituality is constructed in conversation -- a Theistic Package that ties spirituality to personal deities, an Extra-Theistic Package that locates spirituality in various naturalistic forms of transcendence, an Ethical Spirituality that focuses on everyday compassion, and a contested Belief and Belonging Spirituality tied to cultural notions of religiosity. Spirituality is, then, neither a diffuse individualized phenomenon nor a single cultural alternative to "religion." Analysis of the contested evaluations of Belief and Belonging Spirituality allows a window on the "moral boundary work" (Lamont 1992) being done by the cultural discourse of being "spiritual but not religious." The empirical boundary between spirituality and religion is far more porous than the moral and political one. This is a postprint (author's final draft) version of an article to be published in Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion in June 2013. The final version of this article will be found at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1468-5906 (login may be required). The version made available in OpenBU was supplied by the author. PLEASE NOTE: per publisher rules, the text of the article is embargoed until twelve months after publication. If it's after June 1, 2014, and the article is still not available for download, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Sat, 01 Jun 2013 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/2144/5449 2013-06-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2144/4357 2001 Editors Smith-Moran, Barbara; Bucher, Gail Phillips; Petersen, Rodney L.; Andresen, Jensine; Dixon, Thomas; Fraser, Bruce W.; Harnish, Robert; Heim, S. Mark; Park, Andrew; Rassmussen, Lawrence; Sharpe, Kevin; Carroll, Thomas; Shaner, Katherine; Fuhrmann, Helmut Mon, 01 Jan 2001 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/2144/4357 2001-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2144/4356 2000 Editors Smith-Moran, Barbara; Bucher, Gail Phillips; Petersen, Rodney L.; Brink, John J.; Dixon, Thomas; Fulljames, Peter; Haffner, Paul; Harnish, Robert; Highfield, Ronald; Heim, S. Mark; van Huyssteen, Wentzel; Keller, Catherine; Klemm, David; Klostermaier, Klaus; Olson, Alan M.; Russell, Robert J.; Sharpe, Kevin; Wildman, Wesley J.; Bouma, Rolf; Rourke, Nancy; Gertz, Jeri Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/2144/4356 2000-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2144/4355 1999 Editorial Board and Panel Smith-Moran, Barbara; Bucher, Gail Philips; Peterson, Rodney L.; Keggi, J. John; Andresen, Jensine; Cassidy, Joseph D.; Corrington, Robert S.; Doncel, Manuel G.; Highfield, Ronald; Keller, Catherine; Mendelsohn, Everett; Murphy, Nancy; Settle, Tom; Sharpe, Kevin Fri, 01 Jan 1999 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/2144/4355 1999-01-01T00:00:00Z