When I started studying how meditators were moving Buddhist meditation into their workplaces nearly twenty years ago, some sociologists wondered why I was studying what appeared to be a niche case.
Today, the examination of how meditators were drawing on Buddhism and other psychological, humanist, and spiritual traditions in their workplaces, innovating them to appeal to new secular audiences, and then teaching such practices to others in their workplaces is more emblematic of how many people in America are engaging in spiritual and religious life. As religious affiliation, attendance, and authority decline, Americans are experiencing a period of what Ruth Braunstein, Brian Steensland, Dan Winchester and I (in part building upon and reinterpreting Joseph Schumpeter’s theory of capitalist innovation) refer to as spiritual and religious creative destruction. In their words, religion is no longer a “one-stop shop,” where many people living in the United States go for community, moral authority, religious practice and inspiration. .
Instead, religious “unbundling” is occurring. In describing the unbundling of religious life, we draw from the term’s both meanings in business, referring to the uncoupling of products and services that were once packaged together, such as songs on albums and television and movies on cable television. The term is beginning to be used by some scholars to describe analogous trends occurring in religious life. In light of everpresent emergent technologies and the expanding influence of capitalism, we have been developing a sociological framework to aid in deepening our understandings of how religious “unbundling” is occurring and its consequences. As the authority of organized religion wanes and the locus of responsibility for one’s spiritual and religious life shifts from religious communities onto individuals – who face time pressures, demands from other responsibilities, such as caring for loved ones, work, and the enticing possibility of relief and escape through alluring entertainment – we argue that those who pursue religious or spiritual life engage with an increasingly “unbundled” religious landscape.
This is shaping religious and spiritual life in the United States in some evident, but many unacknowledged ways, all of which are rife for further exploration by social scientists. With increasing powers of individual discretion and choice, even among the religious, people seek the sacred “goods” of salvation, meaning, purpose, community, ritual and spiritual uplift as easily outside of religious congregations as in them. And they may also create their own syncretic and individualistic piecemeal configurations of meanings, beliefs, and practices through bricolage of secular, religious, and spiritual imaginaries and practices. Or they may join small, emergent groups rebundling components of these various cultural streams and/or creating new kinds of transcendent meanings and practices that align with their participants’ values, fit their schedules, and do not carry the burdens of required ideological, time, or financial commitments that some traditional religious organizations expect.
The workplace as a new source of–and constraint upon–spiritual and religious practice
The expansion of capitalism and neoliberalism into the depths of many Americans’ lives has forced religion and spirituality to compete with–and sometimes learn from or mimic–the market for attention and consumer products. The inverse is also happening. Some “greedy” workplaces, have absorbed people’s time and attention, becoming the locus not only of employees’ professional lives, but of their personal lives–and their sense of purpose, meaning, and sometimes transcendence as well.
As Arlie Hochschild noted, facing the demands of both work and their households, many Americans experience “time binds.” Work can become a place where professionals find purpose, meaning, and are appreciated, yet it feels like people’s work, household, and social responsibilities require more time than is available. Given these opportunities and constraints, it is not surprising that many Americans are finding innovative ways to tie their religious and spiritual beliefs and practices to their work, integrating productivity and spirituality in novel ways.
Spiritual intrapreneurs and meditators, for example, created the Search Inside Yourself Program at Google to help develop engineers’ emotional intelligence. This approach appealed more than prior mindfulness-based stress reduction approaches, because Googlers at the time either did not want to admit they were stressed or thought the stress aided them. Carolyn Chen and I have also documented how mindfulness was made to conform and fit into what she calls “corporate time” through adopting “the liturgy of efficiency” and slotting mindfulness into emailing practices, “mindful moments” walking to meetings, or by including a brief pause before a meeting. In a particularly notable example, she also describes visiting a labyrinth adjacent to a large tech firm’s gym which centered around the company logo. While scholars such as Chen and I have been arguing for some time that elites and other professionals are bringing spirituality and reconceived religious practices adapted to secular contexts into their everyday work, there is reason to believe this is occurring more broadly. For example, Elaine Ecklund and Denise Daniels describe how, motivated by their faith, Christians can create “embodied cultures of care,” and more honesty in their workplaces. Such practices can be used to intentionally push back against capitalist norms, or they may integrate them.
There is also evidence that demanding work schedules are constraining, shaping and enabling religious and spiritual practices in different ways. Using a nationally representative survey data of Americans from 2022, Evan Stewart and I found that demanding work schedules did not necessarily curtail Americans’ sacred practices on the whole, but rather, certain kinds of practices, like attending religious services. In particular, most people working irregular schedules report challenges in religious and spiritual practices due to work and engaging in higher rates of more flexible spiritual practices (e.g. writing and meditation). In an interesting twist, however, those with split shifts reported higher aggregated religious practices, higher attendance at spiritual groups, and more frequent teaching as a religious practice. This particular structure of work appears to enable those working to have more opportunities to pursue both religious and spiritual practice during the day.
Competition with kids’ activities and entertainment
In addition to workplace expectations, American parents also juggle their kids’ interests, commitments to their larger families, and household responsibilities in addition to religious commitments. Parenting scholars note how American parents, especially many middle and upper-class parents hoping to foster a competitive edge, are investing considerable time, resources and emotional labor into their kids’ development. Such investments of kid-centered family time provoke questions about whether commitments to developing kids’ competitive athletic, musical and other talents is infringing on time committed to religious communities. Although some older studies, such as Annette Lareau’s pathbreaking scholarship on middle class parents’ “concerted cultivation” of their kids, and studies of Christian families approaches to balancing sports and religious life have suggested that parents across class still maintain some commitments to attending religious congregations, the question remains whether this continues to be the case, with the increasing pressures of more competitive, expensive, and privatized youth sports in particular, making increasing demands on kids and their parents alike.
There is also the question of where downtime to recover from overwork or investing in one’s kids fits in the mix. Religion has to compete with what for many are more convenient or personally appealing alternatives. These range from the appeal of attending Sunday brunch or spin class instead of church, or seeking refuge in the comfort of one’s home in a Netflix binge or in a walk in the woods. Perhaps one can find spiritual uplift in popular entertainment, such as through watching Star Wars or Christmas movies. Or one may even be able to experience communal transcendence by attending a Taylor Swift concert. But are such stand-alone forms of consumption or experience qualitatively different from regularly attending services grounded in religious values and practices in one’s local community, and do they have different individual and social consequences? Such questions demand attention from sociological and religious studies scholars.
Contested religion
Even for those continuing to attend church or other religious organizations, for many pastors and parishioners alike, such sites have become politically contentious. As ideological streams of social justice or MAGA politics have become more visible in religious settings, religious leaders have struggled over contested meanings of what their religion should be and to unite their communities. It appears that religious leaders increasingly lack the authority to decisively determine the religious values needed to bind their congregations and motivate their members’ self-growth in a shared direction.
Religious leaders also face a growing number of religious experts, entrepreneurs and influencers outside of their traditional religious institutions and hierarchies. Some of these emergent religious and spiritual experts are also involved in adjudicating what is indeed religious or secular. As religion and spirituality move across institutions, it is seemingly impossible to distinguish objectively between “religion” and the “secular,” as scholars of legal cases concerning yoga and mindfulness across education and other parts of government suggest. In a striking example, Candy Gunther Brown documents how leaders of the yoga organization Yoga Alliance posed different arguments about whether yoga was religious or not in court cases in Washington D.C. and California based on their interests in each case. When the District of Columbia taxed yoga and other health-related services for physical exercise, Yoga Alliance president Richard Karpel argued that the aim of yoga was about spiritual development, not fitness. Yet, when parents sued in San Diego, California, alleging their school district’s Ashtanga Yoga training was establishing religion in school in Sedlock v. Baird (2013), Yoga Alliance’s response changed. They then argued yoga is often practiced for physical exercise and is not necessarily religious in defense of the argument that yoga should be allowed in U.S. public schools.
These new religious and secular landscapes invite attention and inquiry. Are they continuing to provide Americans with the same or different kinds of meaning, purpose, fulfillment and well-being as religious congregations have in the past? Are they creating new or equivalent kinds of social fabric and trust which can anchor democracy? Or might some of these emergent and easy-to-access secular, spiritual and religious innovations prove to be false idols, which may provide users or consumers with a moment of peace or more fleeting dopamine hits, but lack some of the long-term benefits that more disciplined sacred practices rooted in enduring communities provide? Time–and more scholarship–may tell.
Thank you to Brian Steensland, Ruthie Braunstein and Dan Winchester for your comments on earlier versions of this piece.
