The emergency of the concept of “non-religious spirituality”: Contributions from terminological reference works

• Autor(a) principal: Lira, André Augusto Diniz
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Outros Autores: Cézar Adam, Júlio
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Rever (São Paulo. Online)
• Texto Completo: https://revistas.pucsp.br/index.php/rever/article/view/62573
• topic: Espiritualidade; Espiritualidade não religiosa; Obras de referência; Conceitos; Spirituality; Non-religious spirituality; Reference works; Concepts

This article analyzes the emergence of the notion and concept of non-religious spirituality in works of a terminological nature, within the scope of theology and the sciences of religions. To do so, it considers the general concept of spirituality and the specific concept of non-religious spirituality, in technical reference works such as dictionaries, compendia, lexicons, encyclopedias, produced since the 1980s. In general terms, the steps of Gil (1995) were followed, regarding a bibliographical research as several types of readings: exploratory, selective, analytical and interpretive. The selective reading was performed in two steps. In the initial exploratory reading, we found 35 terminological reference works, but only 7 met the inclusion and exclusion criteria of the sample. In the works of theology analyzed, the normative aspects, of growth in the life of personal and community piety, from the Christian perspective, prevailed. In the works of religious studies, the reading of the phenomenon from the non-religious point of view prevails, based on the disciplines of psychology, sociology and history of religion. In all analyzed dictionaries, there was a positive bias of spirituality that sticks to the transcendent, even if this is a metaphor of God, of a deity or even of overcoming oneself towards a broader dimension of life.