Bogosity

I’m just starting to read The Spirituality Revolution by David Tacey. This is part of my post theology studies commitment to try and keep reading that are kind of theological so that I can still enjoy theology a bit. It’s not as much fun without the motivation of lectures, assignments and peers so maybe some of you out there might like to get on board or something. I’m not sure how.

Anyway, I thought I’d wack an opinion on here right as I’m starting the book to see how wrong I am about what I assume the book is about and also because I haven’t posted for awhile and maybe this will help get some thoughts going. (I confess that I’ve not been doing any daily prayers which is also leading to a kind of non bogus life at the moment)

So what I think I know of this book is that it’s trying to latch onto the 911 related rise of fundamentalism and saying that their is another side to it which is the rise of a spirituality in mainstream society that doesn’t come from churches and isn’t subject to any authority but consists of people moving away from purely rational and scientific philosophies and embracing a kind of mysticism.

So my comment reading the introduction in 2007 (five years after it was written) is that while this sounds like a nice idea, I see no evidence of a groundswell of spirituality. There are plenty of fundamentalists about and fundamentalism itself seems to be getting slightly less extreme in some places in Australia as it becomes more mainstream but if there are ordinary people starting to really dig spirituality, it’s not happening anywhere near me. Having said that, I’m not in a good position to observe this phenomenon working in the IT industry where people are generally pretty quiet about their personal stuff.

Anyway, either I’m wrong about the book and it’s about something completely different, or I’m wrong about society and I’m missing a really big obvious swing towards spirituality or I’m right and the spirituality revolution kind of missed the wave (to use a surfing analogy though I’ve never surfed – I hope you get what I’m on about – you know, you see the wave coming, you get up on the board, the wave goes under you, you fail to catch it and then watch it go right past towards the beach)