Joantine Berghuijs

Being ‘Spiritual’ and Being ‘Religious’ in Europe: Diverging Life Orientations

The present study shows that being ‘spiritual’ and being ‘religious’ are becoming different life orientations for a large part of the population. As far as we know, for the first time, a sample from an European country shows that these orientations are reflected in two coherent clusters of beliefs, experiences, and practices of what we call ‘new spirituality’ on the one hand and ‘traditional, church-related religion’ on the other hand. In addition, it appears that ‘only spiritual’ (and not ‘religious’) people and ‘only religious’ (and not ‘spiritual’) people have less ‘intensive’ spiritual/religious lives than people who describe themselves as ‘both spiritual and religious’. The ‘both’ category is not homogenous, probably as a result of the different associations which its members have of the conceptions of ‘spiritual’ and ‘religious’. The people in this category can be sub-divided in two sub-groups which show different profiles.

Conceptions of Spirituality among the Dutch Population

This article explores the conceptions of spirituality in a large and representative sample (N=2313) of the general population in the Netherlands. Spirituality is described mostly in cognitive terms (54%), especially in the form of general references to a transcendent reality (e.g. ‘more between heaven and earth’). Experiential expressions are used in more than a quarter of the descriptions. Important patterns in the descriptions are: spirituality as the transcendent God, spirituality as inwardness, and spirituality as mental health. In the sample, 21% distance themselves from spirituality; among people with a secular outlook this percentage is 35%. We paid special attention to differences in conceptions of spirituality between people inside and outside institutional religious contexts and between people who self-identify as ‘spiritual’ and those who do not.

Multiple religious belonging in the Netherlands: an empirical approach to hybrid religiosity

Abstract Dutch society is highly secularized in terms of decreasing church membership and church attendance. Meanwhile, there are many ‘religious creatives’ who fulfil their need for meaning by using multiple religious sources. This paper presents an empirical investigation into the occurrence and nature of hybrid religion in the Netherlands, seen as ‘multiple religious belonging’ (MRB). After a number of global indications of the importance of MRB, this is the first attempt to quantify and detail MRB in a population. A new approach to ‘religious belonging’ is developed, not in an exclusive, ‘property’ sense, but in terms of being related and feeling at home. This approach leads to a number of ‘modalities of belonging’, that can be measured per religion. To do so, a survey among a representative sample of the Dutch population was used. The survey results indicate that MRB is present among at least 23% of the population in varying combinations and intensities. They also highlight the tendency to emphasize the relatedness between religions, and the permeability and even blurring of the boundaries between them

Exploring Single and Multiple Religious Belonging

This contribution studies the notion of single and multiple religious belonging in a sample of 265 Dutch respondents. We will first focus on modalities of religious belonging and subsequently compare those who claim to draw from just one religion (the monoreligious) with those who indicate that they combine elements from different religious traditions (the multireligious) in terms of their intensities and styles of belonging, loyalty and mobility, and motivations for belonging. In general, multireligious respondents are characterized by their larger flexibility in religious matters as they tend to focus on similarities and common elements in different religions, and less on boundaries between them. By being loyal to themselves in the first place, they feel free to adopt and to leave behind religious beliefs and communities. Emotional and institutional bonds for each religion appear to be less strong than for monoreligious individuals in relation to their single religion.