When discussing religion, today it is quite common (perhaps cliché) to hear people say, “Well, I’m not religious, but I’m spiritual.” Even in churches it is not uncommon to hear something along the lines of, “I don’t believe in religion, but I believe in a relationship with God.” A favorite at the church of my youth was, “I’m not religious, but I love the Lord!” Numerous scholars and journalists have directed energies to analyzing this phenomenon. One of the more popular interpretations attributes the emphasis on personal spirituality to novelty in the contemporary historical moment. In this view, younger generations are seen to display an increasing skepticism towards organized religion, even as they embrace an ethic of personal choice in the face of a global cultural marketplace. In contrast, others have persuasively linked this novel neoliberal spiritual impulse to a long tradition of religious liberalism. For instance, Leigh Schmidt has argued that liberalism, more generally, “was always as much a religious vision of emancipated souls as a political theory of individual rights… For religious liberals, unlike their secular cousins, a deepened and diversified spirituality was part of modernity’s promise.”
Alongside of the grand narrative of religious liberalism that has helped to produce the personal vision of spirituality so popular today, there is a vibrant tradition of African American cultural expression that has cultivated a similar concern with spirituality. In the poetry, prose, performances, visual culture and criticism that comprise this history, one can readily observe what might be called a grammar of spirit (i.e. spirit, spiritual, spirituality). That is, black artists and intellectuals—men and women, alike—have persistently engaged in spirit-talk...
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