Experiences of Transcendence and the “Invisible Religion”

Abstract In his classic “Invisible Religion” Thomas Luckmann has already provided a basic critique of secularization theories and their focus on church oriented religion. Against the backdrop of the ongoing claim of the secularization of Western societies the paper presents results of the international survey ‘Religion Monitor’. It is based on a proposal referring to a multidimensional model of religiosity, which includes the experience of transcendence, operationalized by two items. This concept of transcendence corresponds to Luckmann’s notion of ‘great transcendencies,’ and its operationalization parallels the distinction between ‘religious’ and ‘spiritual’. Aside from some surprising findings, the ‘Religion Monitor’ study has been repeated several times since 2007, allowing changes over time to be discerned. More specifically, the first wave of the survey demonstrated the enormous and previously unknown dissemination of these experiences, and a comparison with consecutive waves clearly shows that experiences of transcendence of both kinds are increasing. While secularization theory assumes an increasing ‘desocialization’ of religion, the data indicate that experiences of great transcendence, as well as practices, are increasing, particularly among younger people. Finally, the increase can be found in societies with quite different constellations of state and religious institutions (and thus cannot be explained by the ‘market thesis’). These findings clearly contradict the secularization thesis. Instead, by demonstrating an increase in experiences of transcendence independent of religious affiliation, the data supports the thesis of popular spirituality. Spirituality is indicated, among other things, by the importance of ‘mystical experiences,’ a significant feature of which is their widespread occurrence across religious, spiritual and non-religious self-identifications Knoblauch, (Present-day spiritualities contrasts and overlaps 81–102, 2014). While the thesis of popular spirituality certainly needs additional analytical refinement and empirical corroboration, this study certainly provides strong evidence for it.