Against Spiritual Education

Abstract

Abstract Spiritual education is only possible within specific religious traditions. In the context of state schools it is a contradiction in terms; and we should beware the political ambition to extend it into that context. Spiritual awareness is a sensitivity to sheer contingency inappropriate to secular institutionalisation. The adequacy of equating spirituality with a sense of the transcendent, as argued recently by David Can, is questioned. This equation marries the spiritual to the rationally knowable and to a concept of ‘a spirit’, elisions which each dictate too tendentious an account of spirituality to justify spiritual education. Spiritual awareness of contingency concerns radically general aspects of human existence. Consideration of the mediation of experience through language supports the claim that spirituality is as much concerned with immanence as transcendence; and that awareness of contingency is the more fundamental issue. The sacrifice and intensity which can attend heightened exercises...