Abstract
Contemporary discourses on “religion” frequently use a distinction between “religious experience” and “institutional religion,” which we have inherited in part as a result of the popularity of William James’ Varieties of Religious Experience. This paper offers a discourse analysis of this distinction—including how it has been taken up by people who say they are “spiritual, but not religious”—and demonstrates that the distinction often seems designed to sanction anything “religious” that might conflict with or upset the status quo in late capitalism. In addition, this paper considers how the distinction has been appropriated by writers who incorporate it into portrayals of Jesus that similarly legitimate a consumerist life under late capitalism.
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