Post-Institutional Spirituality in the Anthropocene

The now-common adage, "we look where the light is," captures well the reasons scholars of religion tend to privilege institutional, governmental, or civil society organizations' responses to the multiple crises of the Anthropocene. But some of the most interesting, and sometimes rather counter-intuitive, responses to the polycrisis or syndemic we face come from individuals and groups that operate outside of the existing religious, and also civil society arenas. In this presentation, I describe three responses to the perilous effects of the Anthropocene that are markedly spiritual but not aligned with large institutional forms of human organization. These three case studies or sources of response include a) a broad meta-narrative of "reverential naturalism" that has become more evident in the Pacific Northwest region of North America as conventional religious phenomena wane; b) the rapid growth of postural yoga forms we see in western societies; and c) the so-called "animal turn" in intellectual, artistic, and activist contexts. What lessons do these three examples have to teach scholars of religion, both about new religion-adjacent phenomena, or new post-religious spiritual communities, both of which seek to respond creatively and effectively to the dark future often associated with the Anthropocene? What methods and theories in the sociology of religion might be most, and least, well equipped to enable scholars to see, collect data about, and interpret the rapid changes occuring in our shared world?