I have recently been venturing more into the realm of political theology, especially in terms of the Occupy movement and the disappointing direction a capitalistic liberal democracy is heading. In response to a post by Adam Kotsko discussing the phrase "spiritual but not religious,"
which I think he correctly identifies as a weak excuse for not engaging real issues regarding the religious nature of humanity and the theological nature of politics, I wrote:
"Spiritual but not religious," along with the conflation of the terms "faith" and "belief," is for me perhaps the most annoying/distressing inheritance of the 19th century Transcendentalist movement and Romanticism and of the 20th century popularization of Eastern philosophy. This notion of "spirituality" in pop culture has been one of the most detrimental movements against religion and theology in the contemporary context. For me, it is the exact inversion of the evangelical fundamentalist movement of the religious right (perhaps because each are the extreme ossification of a Zizekian perversion?), and each are theo-politically dangerous and lead to an impotence grounded in a weak nihilism. In response (a working response): if I understand 1) "religion" negatively in today's political context as a political weapon, 2) "theology" positively as one of the only authentic/faithful ways to re-construct frameworks of (political) existing-in-the-world, and 3) "(the) spiritual" negatively as a completely empty and meaningless gesture, then I think one of the most important things one can do is to de-politicize religion, to (re)politicize theology, and to re-theorize the spiritual (perhaps as a "holy" movement from dunamis to energeia).
In as much as, say, Christianity and capitalism are each politco-economic systems but also religious structures in that they are systems that give individuals frames of orientation and objects of devotion (Fromm), which is to say an ultimate concern (Tillich) or a "national Thing" (Zizek), it seems important to address these issues of religion and theology along with the so-called spiritual.
