It seems odd, at first glance, to talk about “innovation” in religion and spirituality. Religion is often imagined as a bastion of tradition and continuity. Innovation, by contrast, is typically associated with technology, markets, disruption, novelty, creativity–terms which are at odds with our conventional understandings of religion. Talk of innovation in religion and spirituality, then, can seem anachronistic if not inappropriate–an imposition of contemporary economic language onto practices that ought to be understood on very different terms.
Yet significant changes clearly occur across religious and spiritual landscapes. New practices emerge, and old ones are reactivated in new contexts; institutions reorganize, infrastructures are rebuilt, and people adopt fresh ways of naming and pursuing meaning as they emerge. Such developments are visible even within established traditions that need to actively negotiate authority, continuity, and change. It makes sense to call this innovation, and it is an inescapable aspect of “lived religion.” The question is not whether innovation occurs in the domain of religion and spirituality, but how to conceptualize the term in a way that is analytically useful rather than either inherently good or inherently suspect.
What is “Innovation”?
Calling something innovative is a mark of praiseworthiness in the 21st century, but this is a very recent development. Benoît Godin, in his historical overview of the concept, shows that “innovation” functioned in European contexts in the early modern period as a term of derision, associated with disorder, subversion, and heresy. In the 15th century, King Edward VI of England famously issued a “Proclamation Against Those that Doeth Innouate.” To innovate was seen as an affront to king, to God, to order. Early modern thinkers such as Francis Bacon also cautioned against innovation in religious matters. In his essay “Of Innovations” (1625), he warned that any changes to custom should only be introduced cautiously and gradually, and even then regarded with a degree of suspicion.
It was not until the mid-20th century that the term innovation came into widespread use, and with that expansion, its meaning shifted, from denoting either a novelty or the act of introducing the novelty to describing an ongoing process associated with technological invention and creativity. As Godin puts it: “Defining innovation as a process is a twentieth century ‘innovation.’”
Religion was a key arena in which the concept of “innovation” first became a morally charged category. Disputes over liturgy and doctrinal authority turned novelty into a marker of deviance and rendered “innovation” a category through which religious communities policed legitimacy. For instance, Archbishop William Laud’s liturgical reforms in 1630 which were denounced by the Puritans as “Innovations both in Religion, and Government all or the most part of them tending to Popery, and superstition,” contributed to tensions that culminated in the English Civil War. Thus religion is not just a domain to which the language of innovation has been applied, but an important part of the history through which the concept of innovation itself became thinkable and desirable. It is ironic that we have come to imagine innovation today as foreign to religion even though it was within the religious domain that the concept first emerged, particularly as a marker of unworthiness. This history allows us to recognize the peculiarity of today’s pro-innovation bias, which assumes that newness is good and implies progress.
Innovation implies novelty, but novelty alone is insufficient; innovations typically need to be sufficiently practical and reliable in order to gain widespread diffusion. And even novelty does not necessitate absolute originality or disruption. Management scholar Scott D. Anthony offers a simple definition of innovation as “something different that creates value.” Applying this definition to the context of religion and spirituality then raises the question of what it means to create value.
Innovation in Spirituality and Religion
Spirituality is often presented as an alternative to religion, but as Nancy Ammerman argues, it is better to understand it as the “lived core” that animates religion. While debates abound about how to define or measure the term, spirituality can be understood as pertaining to a deeper sense of connection to self, others, nature, or to a transcendent source many call God–leading to a sense of “fullness” or flourishing. While spirituality is often associated with individualistic and even idiosyncratic modes of bricolage, such as Bellah et al.’s famous example of “Sheilaism,” sociologists more recently have argued that spirituality needs to be seen as fundamentally relational.
A spiritual or religious innovation, then, can be defined as a meaningful change in belief, ritual, artifact, or social structure that opens a fresh pathway to that sense of fuller connection, which diffuses widely enough to form tacit rules-of-use and legitimized standards or practices. Because innovations require diffusion, a spiritual or religious innovation cannot be defined at an individual level but requires some degree of community uptake.
To be seen as producing “value,” spiritual/religious innovations need to be oriented towards such deeper connection or flourishing–indicators of which may include a greater sense of meaning, belonging, healing, fidelity, moral orientation, insight, or accessibility. Such innovations (1) need not be entirely novel or original: many religious and spiritual innovations reactivate or recombine older practices, texts, ideas, or sensibilities in new contexts or through new delivery systems; (2) are relational and contextual: something counts as an innovation only relative to a prior state of affairs and shared evaluative standards; and (3) are subject to contestation: describing a development as innovative implies at least implicitly that it does something worthwhile, which raises the question: according to whom?
This question of perspective poses an important challenge for conceptualizing and measuring innovation in religion and spirituality. On the one hand, an etic (outsider) perspective (i.e., from the vantage point of scholars analyzing the phenomenon) can be useful for identifying and mapping innovation through observable change, diffusion patterns, or organizational consequences, regardless of whether participants embrace those phenomena as “innovation.” On the other hand, an emic (insider) perspective considers how religious actors may embrace or resist the language of innovation. For instance, they may frame changes as retrieval, renewal, or reaffirming fidelity to an authentic core. Naming a practice “innovative,” however, can invite suspicion or charges of deviation. For instance, in Islamic contexts, bid’ah (often translated as “innovation”) is widely used as a pejorative term for illegitimate changes or distortions to core beliefs of the religion, creating a palpable discomfort with the label among those engaged in creative religious work. Researchers who are interested in female imams face challenges here as well: while from an etic perspective it can be catalogued as an innovation, using the term may be undesirable and even dangerous from an emic perspective. The point is not that emic and etic perspectives must agree, but that innovation can be claimed, denied, contested, and mis-recognized. Nevertheless, both perspectives are valuable for inquiry: etic perspectives are necessary for comparison, while emic accounts are necessary for understanding meaning, legitimacy, and risk.
The same dynamic applies in other contexts where labeling something innovative can reshape its reception by marking it as potentially deviant, faddish, or unfaithful. In contemporary Haredi Judaism, for instance, the 19th century rabbi Moses Sofer’s polemical slogan “chadash assur min haTorah” (innovation is forbidden by the Torah) still serves for some as a principle of resistance to modernity and technological innovation. Rejection of “innovation,” further, need not come only from dominant religious authorities, but can also be wielded by dissident groups contesting those authorities. In Catholicism, for instance, the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) rejects the reforms of the Second Vatican Council as illegitimate innovations, and the group positions itself as the guardian of authentic tradition.
Building the Field
The study of innovation in religion and spirituality is still nascent, but efforts have begun to define and map a coherent field of inquiry and practice.
An influential position paper by Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK) frames Religion and Innovation as an under-theorized domain, and proposes a triangular model distinguishing (1) innovation in religion, which examines how religious organizations, practices, communities etc. undergo innovation, (2) religion in innovation, which examines how religions contribute to innovation in markets, technology, etc., and (3) innovation as a religion or quasi-religion. This model helps clarify that innovation is inherently normative and context-dependent.
Other initiatives focus on mapping spiritual innovation. Sacred Design Lab defines spiritual innovation as novel responses to spiritual longings—belonging, becoming, and connection to something beyond—that contribute to human flourishing. Their global research suggests that spiritual innovators typically combine novelty with rootedness in existing religious or wisdom traditions, often focusing on the spiritually underserved; at the same time, these innovators lack adequate community support, training, accountability, and sustainable structures. The Lab has also developed a digital platform to provide spiritual innovators with needed resources.
Another approach to studying spiritual innovators is the University of Southern California’s Center for Religion and Civic Culture’s work on “spiritual exemplars,” individuals whose disciplined spiritual practices sustain humanitarian engagement. Here, innovation appears in new configurations of spiritual formation that link spiritual practice to public action, thereby expanding the field to include engaged practice and moral resilience.
The Fetzer Institute’s Spiritual Innovation Collaborative bridges traditional religious wisdom and contemporary spiritual seeking, in a world in which many are drawing on practices like mindfulness or Sabbath without the rich lineage of teachers and communities that sustain them. The emphasis here is on translation, transmission, and the ethical sharing of spiritual heritage.
The Chaplaincy Innovation Lab focuses on innovation in spiritual care in settings outside congregational life, including hospitals, universities, prisons, and responses to disasters. Its contribution lies in highlighting shifts in professional roles and delivery systems rather than doctrinal content. Ongoing research on “the spiritual infrastructure of the future” at Bryn Mawr broadens this infrastructural lens, mapping changes within religious ecosystems and treating endings and beginnings as interconnected processes. Innovation here includes leadership pipelines, institutional redesign, and new forms of spiritual support.
Religious/Spiritual Innovation as a Contested Category
Spiritual innovation, however, is not an unqualified good. Critics and practitioners alike have raised concerns about spiritual consumerism; the commodification of the sacred; commercialization of spiritual expertise (e.g., “capitalist shamanism”); spiritual cultural appropriation; selective amplification of some spiritual objectives while compromising others; and reinforcement of problematic power dynamics.
There are also conceptual challenges with the term “innovation.” It carries American and capitalist connotations, and in some traditions is associated with illegitimate distortions of religion (e.g., bid’ah). This raises questions as to whether other cognates may be more suitable, such as adaptation, retrieval, resourcement, renewal, reform, restoration, or revitalization.
Yet abandoning the term innovation would forfeit certain analytical advantages. It helps shine a light on new adaptations of spiritual traditions and practices, new modalities of religious/spiritual practice, new forms of access to religious goods, and new forms of spiritual community. What distinguishes the study of innovation in religion and spirituality from prior scholarship on religious change is its ability to help us recognize (1) the agency of actors experimenting both within and against inherited forms; (2) the evaluative criteria by which change is judged as a distortion or legitimate reform; and (3) the processes of diffusion and institutionalization of new practices.
Innovation is not the opposite of tradition. It is one of the ways that traditions endure, fracture, and reconfigure. Used analytically and reflexively, the concept can helpfully illuminate the dynamism inherent in religion and spirituality, without presuming that novelty is its own justification.
