January 15, 2024 • 52 mins
This episode welcomes back Tad Robinson, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy at Muhlenberg College.
In his recent work, Robinson has asked how reframing questions of religious activity as spiritual rather than religious might lead to different insight and understanding of prayer, meditation, and a variety of other practices. We also discuss the realities of teaching a new generation that is less connected to religious institutions as well as the philosophical implications of considering spiritual practice from a new angle.
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Chip Gruen (00:05):
Welcome to ReligionWise. I'm your host Chip
Gruen. I'm very excited towelcome back a guest who we've
had on the podcast previously,Dr. Tad Robinson, who is
professor of philosophy here atMuhlenberg College, you might
remember that he talked aboutthe philosophy of religion in
season one, episode four. If youdidn't get a chance to listen to
that episode, I invite you to goback and listen, not that it's
(00:27):
necessary for this conversation,but can provide a little bit of
context and additionalinformation on the philosophy of
religion more generally. Thereason that he's back today,
though, is that he, through hisrecent scholarship and teaching
is reframing some of thosequestions from philosophy of
religion, and considering themfrom a new angle. The central
(00:49):
way he's doing this is thinkingabout these things as spiritual
practice as thinking aboutspirituality rather than
religion. And this is reallyimportant. And I think we
teaching the liberal artscollege get a front row view of
this is that in the last fewdecades, the percentage of
people who don't claim religiousaffiliation or religious
(01:10):
identity in their matriculationmaterials has gone up
dramatically from the mid singledigits to about 40% of students
entering. So the old cliche isthat people will say that they
are spiritual, but notreligious. Dr. Robinson is
taking that question seriously.
And reframing a lot of thequestions that he asks about
(01:31):
religious belief and practice,along the lines of what we might
think of as more individual,less institutional, less
corporate structures. So forexample, the practice of prayer,
meditation, yoga, other thingsthat people might do outside of
a religious institution, andthey just do on their own. And
(01:53):
so the set of questions that heasks about those practices, is
oftentimes very different thanwhat we might think of when we
think of questions, philosophyof religion questions from a
traditional perspective. Theother reason I find this topic
really interesting, and I findDr. Robinson to be a great
interlocutor for me, is thatbeing a religious studies
(02:15):
professor who is influenced alot by history of religions,
sociological methods,anthropological methods, the
questions that he asks are justfundamentally different. Now,
religious studies as a fieldcast a very wide net, and can
include a lot of differentmethods. But the kinds of
questions that he asked and thekinds of analysis that he does
(02:37):
just differs really radicallyfrom the kinds of things I think
about with students in myclasses, or in my own writing
and research. The final note Iwant to make here is just a note
of clarity, because this isaudio only you might not pick up
on the usage of a word. And thatword is "nones," we refer to it
(02:58):
quite a lot. And it's explaineda little bit but I just want to
make it really clear. When werefer to "nones" that is n o n e
s, meaning those people who marktheir religious affiliation as
"none." This is a term that yousee used in polling, in data
collection, that people willmark "none" as, or wright "none"
(03:21):
as a religious affiliation. Andso they have sometimes been
referred to as the "nones,"which of course is in contrast
to nuns, n u n s, the Catholicfemale religious individuals who
live a life dedicated to God the"nones" n o n e s and the nuns n
u n s are obviously very, verydifferent and distinct from one
(03:44):
another. So just that point ofclarity as you listen to the
episode. I hope you enjoylistening to episode as much as
I've enjoyed thinking about itwith Dr. Robinson. Tad Robinson,
thanks for coming onReligionWise.
Tad Robinson (04:00):
Well thanks for having me.
Chip Gruen (04:01):
So astute listeners will remember that you were on
season one, episode four. Andthe title of that episode was
philosophy of religion. And wetalked about this subfield of
philosophy, which is, of course,the context of your own
professional work and thecontext of our conversation
today, but in your recentresearch and course design,
(04:22):
you're choosing to focus not onreligion as the category of
central concern, but instead onthe word or on the category
spirituality. Why did you chooseto reframe the way that you
consider belief and practicearound that term spirituality
instead of religion?
Tad Robinson (04:38):
Yeah, I mean, I was thinking about this
initially, primarily in terms ofkind of meeting students where
they were with respect to thecourse, philosophy of religion
course. And, you know, one ofthe things I had noticed was
that the term religion, youknow, has, over the last few
years in particular kind of cometo connote a set of institutions
(05:02):
or ideas about institutions andrules and things that students
just weren't very interested in.
And so I was sort of thinkingabout ways to kind of meet them
where they were at. And so Ithought, well, you know,
students and the public atlarge, seem to see spirituality
in much more positive terms,people are interested in
spirituality, this is a termthat kind of has a positive
(05:24):
valence with people. And so Iwas thinking, Well, you know,
what if I kind of reframed thecourse, with a different title,
and maybe just change some ofthe terminology, and I think,
initially, I was thinking Icould teach a philosophy of
religion course, titled areframed around spirituality. So
that was the initial idea. Youknow, but when I made the
(05:44):
decision to do that, and startedreally getting into the nitty
gritty of like, okay, well, I'mgonna have to have a, you know,
an account of kind of whatspirituality is, in kind of
general, and maybe how thatdiffers a little bit from
religion, as we frame it as Iframe the course for students.
You know, I started to realize,like, you know, that this
framing affords some newopportunities for thinking
about, you know, philosophicaltopics, right. And so, that was
(06:07):
where I sort of started off. Soonce I started thinking about
this, I thought, Okay, well,what, what is, what is
spirituality, right? Andobviously, this is a super
complicated term, it means amillion things to, to a million
different people. And so I hadto kind of circumscribe this a
little bit. And so, as I wasthinking about what spirituality
(06:29):
is, or at least a way thatoperationalize it for the
course, you know, I startedthinking about well, okay, one,
like, people use this term, youknow, in a really general way.
So however we think aboutspirituality, it's gotta be what
I would call kind oftransreligious, right. So it's
got to be something that we cantalk about, a Buddhist
spirituality, and a new agespirituality, and maybe a
(06:51):
secular spirituality, and atraditional, more sort of
traditional kind of Westernkinds of spirituality. So that
was one kind of limitation.
Another kind of limitation was,you know, had to do with the
fact that, like, why do peoplecare about spirituality? You
know, my sense is that, youknow, people are motivated to
think about spirituality, youknow, because there's some sort
(07:13):
of problem, right, that, youknow, they sort of sense that
there's some sort of gapbetween, like the way the world
is, and the way it could be orshould be, right. And so I think
that, that that's a sort ofreally general way of talking
about an experience a lot of ushave, probably a lot of the
time, which is just to say,like, why are things this way?
(07:33):
Or why did I do that? And notthat or I wish I hadn't done
that? Or, here's something Icould do in the future, like,
what am I going to have to do?
So there's sort of this gapbetween the way the world is and
the way it could or should bethat I think we're constantly
navigating. And that's, I think,a pretty deep element of the
human condition, in a sense,right. So I think that that does
connect well, with kind of whypeople will be looking towards
(07:55):
spirituality or looking forspirituality. Kind of a third
element that I was thinkingabout was, you know, how
spirituality might differ from,you know, like a life hack,
right? Or how spiritually mightdiffer from like, an
intervention like psychologicalintervention or clinical
(08:15):
intervention, right? In thesense that like, yeah, people
have lots of problems, right.
And so, there's different waysof approaching those. So how
does spirituality differ inthese kinds of ways? And differ
from these kinds of phenomena?
And, you know, I think, youknow, as I was thinking about
it, and reading about this, weone of the things that
spirituality seems to be, atleast for many people, is about
sort of fundamental changes tokind of who we are, right, and
(08:41):
the way we understand things,right. So, you know, these
aren't intended sort of shortterm fixes, right? You know,
they're not intended to dealwith what we might think was
like pathological problemsthere. These are sort of, you
know, efforts to deal with theworld, you know, in light of
kind of who we are, in somesense. And then sort of the last
thing that was kind of drivingme was this observation, like,
(09:02):
spirituality is totallypractical, right, that
spirituality, you know, is sortof most sort of paradigmatically
kind of exemplified in practiceslike prayer and meditation, and
yoga, and, you know, fasting andall these kinds of things that
we associate with kind ofreligious practice, I think. So,
kind of taking all that intoaccount. I was like, Okay, well,
let's let's operationalizespirituality for the purposes of
(09:24):
this course, you know, in termsof a positive effort. So what I
ended up doing in terms ofoperationalizing, the term for
the course. And my thinking, wasto think about it this way,
right? To think aboutspirituality as a practical
orientation toward a morefulfilled and harmonious life.
And sort of in a little moredetail, the idea is to
(09:45):
understand it as an orientationtowards a life where somebody's
actions and desires andunderstanding and priorities and
emotions cohere not only withone another, but with the way
the world is, and with thosethings that are recognized as
substantively valuable withinit.
Chip Gruen (10:03):
Wow, that sounds like a philosophers defintiion.
Tad Robinson (10:04):
Hey, you know...
Chip Gruen (10:06):
So I want to follow up on this a little bit. Because
you, I mean, if I'munderstanding correctly, like on
the one hand that there wasalmost a market driven approach
to thinking about the coursephilosophy of religion, and as
you said, meeting studentswhere, where they're at. And so
(10:27):
that demanded a sort of acategorical reconstruction of
how you're approaching thecourse. But on the other hand,
you are approaching, I thinkyou'll agree is a somewhat
similar body of materialreframed from a different
perspective. So I guess I wantto get at your your strategy
(10:47):
here. I mean, is that are theequal parts of those things? Is
this about marketability? Or doyou fundamentally see these
beliefs and practices theseapproaches in a different way?
As you have sought to reframethe category?
Tad Robinson (11:03):
Yeah, I mean, I think both. And it was
unexpected, that that thereframing this would have
significant consequences forthinking about traditional
topics and traditionalphilosophical questions. Right.
So yeah, I mean, I think, youknow, just to just to give a
couple of examples, right? Imean, so on the one hand, I
(11:24):
think that you can do a lot ofwhat you might normally do in a
traditional philosophy ofreligion course, in a course on
philosophy and spirituality, orphilosophy of spirituality. But
I think that like those kind oftraditional topics, you know,
arguments for God's existence,for example, right, or problem
of evil, right? These become notthe primary questions, they
(11:45):
don't become the first questionsthat come up, right? So. So if
you're thinking aboutspirituality, and you're
thinking about, like, you know,a person kind of trying to
transform their lives in lightof their their values, and, you
know, what they regard to betrue? The questions are human
centered, as opposed to kind of,you know, universe centered or
external centered. And so, youknow, for example, you're gonna
(12:09):
have to focus on Well, what isit that people do? Right? So,
you know, what are thesespiritual practices or spiritual
exercises? And why do people dothose things? Right, in
particular, as opposed tosomething else? Right. And when
you ask those kinds ofquestions, you know, issues of
like, what the self is kind ofcome up automatically, because
the question is, well, you know,you're transforming yourself,
(12:30):
well, what is that? Right? Andso, you know, looking back at
the history of philosophy, youknow, you see lots of different
kinds of stories about what selftransformation is, right? So,
you know, to give a couple ofexamples, one you might think of
self transformation is selfdiscovery, right? So there's a
lot of discussion in thecontemporary world, right about
(12:51):
like, finding the true self,where that is, like, Hey, your
true self is there, you justkind of dig it out. Right. And
another model, thinking aboutthat is sort of self mastery.
Right? So where the idea isthat, hey, the individual is
this disjointed, or multifacetedsort of being and then what we
need to do, in order to masterthe self is kind of push aside,
(13:13):
those parts of us that don'tcontribute to our well being or
our flourishing, or aren't areinconsistent with our values?
Right? There's another way ofthinking about this
transformation in terms ofcreation of the self, right? So
where, hey, the self is not thispre existing thing like you make
yourself right. So we see thisin certain existentialist kinds
of writers, but also withcontemporary kinds of narrative
(13:34):
identity and so on. So, youknow, that's one kind of case.
Another kind of case has to dowith self knowledge, again, a
traditional philosophicalsubject that goes back to
Socrates. Right, but notsomething that typically comes
up in a philosophy of religioncourse. So what does that mean?
Well, you know, when it comes toself knowledge, one of the
things that comes out, at leastin a lot of discussions of
(13:55):
spiritual practices, sort of howwe don't know what's going on,
inside of us, sometimes we don'tknow what we want, right? We
don't know what we really value,right? And that part of this
process of digging things out,you know, is coming to know the
self, right? And that's it.
There's an interesting kind ofdiscussion there
philosophically, becausephilosophers have for a long
time, sort of taken selfknowledge to be something pretty
(14:16):
easy, right? But at leastaccording to a lot of people
writing on spiritual practices,for example, it's it's really
not right. So there's aninteresting philosophical
question there that I thinkgrows right out of these
questions of, if we're gonnafocus on spirituality. And
there's some other steps that wecan talk about, but that's just
a couple of examples.
Chip Gruen (14:36):
So I want to get a sense, obviously, as you
indicate a lot of the questionsthat you're digging into are
questions that have backgrounds,philosophical backgrounds,
right? There's reading there arethinkers there are people who
have thought about these, thoughmaybe not exactly in the context
of philosophy of religion,right. So I'm curious about how
(14:59):
much of of what you're doing,again, in both the paper you
presented at the AmericanAcademy of Religion, and in this
course redesign is a part of thecontemporary trends in
philosophy of religion, or isthis Tad Robinson using the
freedom of being a professor ata liberal arts college to do and
(15:22):
formulate, and imagine the worldin new and creative ways, apart
from sort of major trends thatare going on in the field?
Tad Robinson (15:31):
You know, I think, you know, on the one hand, it is
it is sort of, you know, amatter of me sort of trying to
plow ahead and sort of find anew way of thinking, right. That
said, I mean, there certainly,you know, I certainly had
resources to draw on. Right. So,just to give a couple examples,
Robert Solomon, who's a, youknow, pretty well known
(15:51):
philosopher, the University ofTexas, you know, wrote a wrote a
book called "Spirituality forthe Skeptic," you know, back in
the early 2000s, right, there'sbeen a number of edited
collections that have come outon on spirituality. You know,
there's a recent book that wemight talk about a little later
by this philosopher namedTerence Cuneo called "Ritualized
Faith," right, which focuses onkind of liturgical practices in
(16:13):
the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Right. So there is a sort of,you know, burgeoning is maybe
overt, overstating it right. Butthere is, I think, an interest
in in an increasing interest insort of thinking about
spirituality, maybe not asopposed to religion or
philosophy of religion, right.
(16:33):
But, you know, in conjunctionwith, so, you know, yeah,
there's that. And I've had theopportunity to draw on a lot of
that material that said, right,the way that I'm thinking about
this in terms of atransformation of models of the
transformation of self, modelsof self knowledge, right, maybe
thinking about philosophy ofhabit, for example, you know,
these are, in some ways, stuffthat I'm having to kind of come
(16:55):
up with and dig out andreformulate and frame myself.
Chip Gruen (16:58):
So I want to go back, I mean, and listeners of
the podcast, will, will knowthat I am particularly
interested in some of the thingsthat you I won't say threw away,
but some of the things that youdismissed as being principle to
philosophy of religion, that youare defocusing...
Tad Robinson (17:17):
Right.
Chip Gruen (17:17):
...institutions, certain kinds of rules, or
regulations, or structures, andreligious studies as a field,
you know, it's very heavilyinst, influenced by sociology
and anthropology that reallycenter on those kinds of things.
Tad Robinson (17:34):
Right.
Chip Gruen (17:35):
So I want to, you know, maybe do a disciplinary
contrast here...
...or just thinkabout the ways in which you
Tad Robinson (17:41):
Yeah.
imagined some of those thingsthat are traditionally in the
field of religious studies ofsocial institutions, social
roles, determined identities,ethics, all of those sorts of
things. And to see where you seethis approach, overlapping or
not overlapping? Or how, forexample, a philosophy of
(18:05):
spirituality would think about,say, hierarchy or structure, or
those questions that you're sortof leaving aside for other
disciplines or other courses.
Yeah. I mean, youknow, it is true, like focusing
on spirituality, at least asI'm, as I'm thinking about it is
focused on kind of individualsinner lives. Right. And so it is
(18:29):
opposed, in some sense, or atleast doesn't really necessarily
draw on sort of sociological orpolitical understandings of of
humans, right. So that's, youknow, that's, that's the case.
Right? So just to give anexample of how that might play
out, right, I mean, so say, wewant to think about meditate
(18:50):
meditation, right? And so we'rethinking, well, what are the
philosophical questions aboutlike meditative practices?
Right? And so we might thinkabout, like, Well, I mean,
meditation, there's lots ofmanuals about meditation, right?
There's lots of sort of, mayberulebook is the wrong word, but
you know, texts that suggestparticular ways of meditating
for particular kinds of reasons,a particular kind of times in
(19:10):
particular kinds of goals,right? And so, you know, as a
philosopher, we can kind of lookat that we can also look at
like, why, you know, to theextent that we have access to
this, you know, why doindividuals engage in this? What
are individuals think they'redoing when they're when they're
doing this, right? So all ofthose are kind of, you know,
starting with individual actionsor sort of, you know, texts that
sort of tell us about why anindividual might want to do
(19:32):
this, right from a sociologicalor anthropological perspective,
we might say, Yeah, but Tad,like why people do things is not
always clear to them, right? Andwe might sociologists,
anthropologist might say, hey,the the sort of social forces,
the external forces that areacting on a person, right,
that's what's really drivingtheir action, right, or their
(19:52):
culture is really driving theiraction, like what they think
they're doing, you know, insidetheir own minds is maybe not an
accurate story about why they'redoing what they're doing. Right.
And I would just say like, youknow, people are complicated,
right? And so, hey, from, youknow, from the perspective that
I'm going to start with, right,we're going to start with like,
what does what do these peoplethink they're doing? Why are
(20:13):
they doing it? As opposed tosort of a sociological or
anthropological perspective thatsays, oh, you know, they're
really, you know, they're reallyengaging in something else,
right? Maybe they are, right?
But we can certainly start withwhat what kinds of reasons they
think they're, you know, aredriving their action.
Chip Gruen (20:29):
So let me give you a critique, I'll see how you how
you how you think about this,because one of the directions
that you seem to be going seemsto be heavily influenced by
psychology, psychology ofreligion, and I wonder how much
that work is influencing whatyou're thinking and how you're
(20:50):
thinking it. Because if we'rethinking about how people's
internal processes are working,or how they think that they're
working on themselves, like,those seem to be psychological
questions. So that's part one.
And part two, I will, I willoften say to my students, I have
the privilege of teaching mytheory and method in the study
of religion, this coming term,and when we get to the
psychology of religion section,one of the critiques I offer to
(21:14):
them after we've gone throughand, and thought about some of
these thinkers, is that the onlyway we can get to the inner
workings of somebody, aspiritual or religious person
talking about their their ownpractice is in fact, the talking
about it, right? The formulatingit, the the self reporting that
is done. And the case I alwaystry to make for my students is
(21:38):
that that is a public act initself, right? Like how one
constructs the story of whatthey're doing, or the narrative
of their own spiritual practiceis itself a performative thing
that gets you a little bit awayfrom psychology and more into
maybe anthropology or sociology.
Tad Robinson (21:59):
Um hmm, yeah.
Chip Gruen (21:59):
So So tell me about the confluences that you have
with psychology, and how youwould respond to that idea of
sort of the public performanceof the stories that people tell.
Tad Robinson (22:08):
Yeah, I mean, I would say that it's like, the
approach that I'm I'm pursuingis sort of like a psychological
approach to religion in thesense that it's focused on the
individual, right, as opposed tosort of a larger group, and that
it's focused on kind of theinner kind of life. Right, you
know, it's not psychological inthe sense that it's not an
empir... you know, not engagingempirical methods, right. at
(22:30):
all, but yeah, there's certainlyan overlap. And some of the
topics that I, you know, I'll betaking up are certainly what we
would call in philosophy, moralpsychology, right? So, questions
of compassion and gratitude, andso on. So, you know, there is
there is an overlap and in someway, you know, that said, Right,
I mean, with respect to the sortof point about, you know,
creating, creating one's sort ofinner life by telling the story
(22:52):
about it. I mean, I think that,that actually is something that
comes out in thinking abouthabits and self transformation.
Right? So, one of the one of thethings that is sort of
philosophy 101 is sort ofAristotle's account of the
virtues Right? And how, how you,you how you become brave, right?
And so Aristotle story about howyou become brave is not that,
(23:14):
like you decide to become braveand start thinking brave
thoughts. Right? It's like, youstart acting like brave people
act, right. And by acting likebrave people act, you become
brave, and you take on thebeliefs and dispositions of
someone who is courageous,right, by acting like courageous
people do, right? So one of thesort of storylines that we kind
(23:35):
of get, and I think this is areal tension among philosophers,
and I think a lot of people isthis sort of dynamic between
inner and outer, right? Or sortof Aristotle's sort of theory,
the virtues, and other peoplehave picked us up in varieties,
a variety of ways, right? Is tosay, like, hey, to change the
inner, you need to change theouter first, right? And so, you
know, we don't always sort ofthink about things that way, we
(23:57):
sort of sometimes think like,well, I want to be different, I
should just sort of change,change my, my inside, right, I
need to change my beliefs, Ineed to change my dispositions
and, and sort of the recognitionthat Aristotle has right is to
say, You can't do that directly,right, you can only change the
inside by changing the outside,in certain kinds of ways, right.
(24:17):
And so I think, like your pointabout, like, telling the story,
in some ways as an example ofthat, right, and there's lots of
examples like that. So there's asort of famous example of John
Stuart Mill in hisautobiography. So it tells a
story about this mentalbreakdown he has, and he sort of
comes to this this conclusion.
He says, like, I just realized,like, you can't just make
yourself happy, right? Like youhave to do, you can't focus on
(24:39):
hap... you can't try to behappy, right? You have to try to
do something else. And happinessis sort of a sort of byproduct,
right? of pursuing the rightkinds of things. Right. And so I
think that that that idea ofsort of, is related, right,
where if you want to do certainkinds of things, specifically
things related to your innerlife, right and changing kind of
(25:01):
who you are, you can't decide todo those, you can't aim to do
that. Right, you have to dosomething else. And as the
byproduct, those changes willhappen. Right. So, yeah, I mean,
I think, you know, the exampleyou're talking about is
precisely one of those. But Idon't think everything's like
that. But I think lots of caseswhen it comes to spirituality
are.
Chip Gruen (25:20):
Okay. So if we take that example, again, of, you
know, the story that people tellabout their own inner lives,
right as being something that issort of discoverable. And we can
use as a basis for thinking in anumber of different ways. It's
interesting to me to think aboutto return to our student
(25:42):
population. And I think that wecan extrapolate out a little bit
from our student population tothink about Gen Z, obviously, we
teach people mostly who are the18 to 22 year old set, though,
not exclusively, that theirthinking on a lot of these
questions is different than itwas say, when we were 18 to 22
(26:04):
year old years old, or whenboomers or the silent generation
or the greatest generation were18 to 22 year old, years old.
And I've made a little bit of astudy of this just looking at
the demographic trends of thematriculation data when our
students come in that when wecame to Muhlenberg that the
story was that the populationwas a third Jewish and a third
(26:26):
Catholic, and a third of kind ofeverything else, which is, I
don't know, not the way that wethink about religious diversity
these days. But that was alwaysthe story that was told. And now
if you look at that demographicinformation, something like 40%
don't affiliate at all, youknow, and we could talk about,
(26:47):
you know, where those peoplewould have been 20 years ago, or
whatever. But that this, I thinkthat this phenomenon of the
"nones," the no religiousaffiliation, which we could talk
about as being connected to ornot connected to institutions
and rules. But that thesepeople, it's not as if they
(27:08):
don't think about the largerquestions of meaning, and the
good life, and all of thosesorts of things. But I'm just,
I'm curious to get yourthoughts, you know, on, on this
population that we have a lot ofcontact with, and here not so
much from a marketingperspective. But, you know, how
(27:29):
are humans, at least humans, youknow, that we that we encounter
in a northeastern liberal artscollege, changing the way that
they tell those personalnarratives about meaning and
order and identity, and how doesthat connect to this reframing
that you're doing?
Tad Robinson (27:48):
Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, the way
that, you know, sociologists,others would talk about this as
the rise of the "nones," right.
So, you know, this change in theway that the American or the
North American or the Westernkind of populations are thinking
about religion, You know, Ithink that that does play a role
here. Right. So in saying, youknow, as we were starting off
(28:10):
and saying that, you know,students have sort of started to
think about religion in sort ofways that I wouldn't have when I
was, you know, 20 or 30, or 40.
You know, I think that that doeshave to do with this shift
that's contributing to "nones,"right. So yeah, I think that's,
that's relevant. And, you know,I think you're also exactly
(28:31):
right to say like, simplybecause an individual isa "none"
right. And so no longer, youknow, identifies themselves with
a specific, you know, religiouslabel, right. Like, that doesn't
mean that all of a sudden, likethe kinds of questions that, you
know, people who traditionallywe would call religious right,
have or or, or thinking about,right, they don't lose those,
(28:53):
right. I mean, I think there arecertainly some people out there
that, you know, are totallyuninterested, right, who might
count as a "none." Right, but Ithink a lot of "nones," n o n e
right, a lot of "nones" youknow, really do have these same
kinds of questions about like,you know, what's, you know,
what's my place in the universe?
Right, you know, how do I fitin? How do I understand
suffering? And, you know, howshould I live? And what's good,
(29:15):
right? I think all of thesequestions are pretty, pretty
common. And simply because oneno longer identifies with a
particular category. It's notlike these questions disappear.
So yeah, I mean, I think, youknow, people are as hungry as
they always have for these tothink about these kinds of
things. They're just thinkingabout them, yeah, under
different different kinds oflabels or in different kinds of
ways.
Chip Gruen (29:36):
It's kind of interesting coming into this
conversation I didn't think thatthese things were connected at
all, but I guess I'm just goingthrough the catalog of courses.
I'm teaching this term but theother course I'm teaching is
religion and popular culture.
And one of the premises of thatcourse, is that just because
people are not, or may notnecessarily be traditional
religious, doesn't mean thatThey're not thinking about those
(30:00):
questions. And believe it or notTaylor Swift or, you know, the
the latest limited series on HBOcan contribute to people's
feelings or exploration aboutthe purpose of life or what the
good life is, or any number ofother questions.
Tad Robinson (30:19):
Right.
Chip Gruen (30:20):
You know, that may have been met traditionally in
religious institutions or byreligious leadership. So it
seems like we are kind ofchewing on different sides of
the same bone here a little bit.
Tad Robinson (30:33):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the thing that I think is,
I guess I've sort of reframingkind of what I'm doing in
courses and rethinking aboutkind of what the goal is, right?
is, you know, there are 1000s ofyears of people's reflections on
these big questions, which Ithink that, you know, a student,
(30:53):
right, who sees themselves as a"none" or, you know, doesn't
identify with logician mightmiss out on the opportunity to
explore, right, because theyassociate the term religion
right with, with solelyinstitutions or solely rules,
and so on. Right. And so I thinkI think that spirituality like
the term spirituality presentsan opportunity, right to connect
(31:16):
people with questions to some ofhistory's you know, great kind
of thinkers, right about thesedifficult questions. So, I mean,
yeah, I mean, the hunger forthese to think about these
questions is still there, youknow, people's thoughts about
them are still there. Right. Youknow, I think spirituality that
moniker is one way of trying tobring bring those two things
(31:38):
together from it from apedagogical point of view.
Chip Gruen (31:41):
Yeah, so you, you use the terms in your research
and teaching nondoxastic. And orsecular, I think, to try to
capture some of this. And Ithink I mean, I will say,
nondoxastic is a new one for me,I don't think I've seen that in
print before. But secular,certainly people will be
(32:03):
familiar with. How, I mean, whatdo these terms mean for you in
the work that you're doing? Andhow are they relevant towards
asking, asking some of thesequestions, in particular
secular, because that word isused a lot and loosely and
sometimes pejoratively, in sortof mainstream discourse?
Tad Robinson (32:21):
Yeah. Right. So, you know, by nondoxastic, right,
just, you know, doxa meansbelieve, right? So we're just
talking about kind of nonbelief.
Right. And so, in using thatterm, what I want to get at is
the idea that, you know, aperson might engage in certain
kinds of spiritual exerciseswithout, you know, a
substantive, systematic body ofbelief about the nature of the
(32:42):
universe and so on. Right. Youknow, and the same with with
secularity, right, in the sense,I, you know, I'm sort of using
that term in a simplified way,just to mean, hey, you know,
engaging in these practices in away that does not presuppose,
you know, any kind of specificversion of the good, or of the
nature of reality or anything,right. So, what I want to
(33:06):
capture is simply the idea that,you know, people might be in
this place, right, where theynotice in their lives a gap
between the way things are andthe way they could or should be,
and they sort of, you know, inintuitively, perhaps even right,
sort of try to take some steps,right to to bridge that gap, and
(33:27):
sort of, you know, make stepstowards self transformation,
right? You know, that I thinkpeople can totally legitimately
do that right, without havingany larger body or a very
specific body of outside belief.
So that's what I'm trying totrying to get and kind of get
at, right. Because in myexperience, and I think this,
(33:48):
this comes out in some of theresearch on "nones," right, it's
the, you know, there are peoplewho are just fundamentally
suspicious of any kind ofuniversal claims about the
world, right? Or who are notinterested in investigating
those, right, yet, at the sametime, right, might be interested
in exploring sort of spiritualpractices or spiritual
exercises. And so like, I thinkthat's a really important group
(34:12):
of people to make sure thatwe're talking to and thinking
about, you know, and so thatthat's sort of the root of that
kind of language.
Chip Gruen (34:20):
So let me give you an example to kind of flesh this
out. Like we might imaginesomebody who participates in a
yoga regimen, right? Is a verystaunchly interested in the
practice of yoga and goes anddoes this all the time.
Tad Robinson (34:35):
Right.
Chip Gruen (34:35):
But might then also call themselves an atheist.
Tad Robinson (34:38):
Right.
Chip Gruen (34:38):
Right? And so that, on the one hand, that would be a
spiritual practice that is doingsomething that in the words that
you've used as transformation ofthe self or self discovery or
what have you...
Tad Robinson (34:49):
Right.
Chip Gruen (34:50):
But on the other hand, is not tied to anything
that I would call a cosmologicalpresence out there somewhere.
Tad Robinson (34:57):
Right. Yeah, and I think I mean, so So I think some
people would say, Well, youknow, that's not spirituality.
Right. That's health. Right. Youknow, that's, and I think that
that's a that's an openquestion. Right. So one of the
things I think it's reallyimportant not to do, you know,
when we start reframing thingsis to, is to answer questions
(35:18):
before we've asked them, right,or to answer questions by fiat,
by definition. Right. And sowhen thinking about spiritually,
like, is that, is that a form ofspirituality? Yeah, I mean, I
think that that's an openquestion. So I was just reading
something yesterday where anauthor was, you know,
considering like, Hey, couldyou, you know, could you engage
in yoga? Right, without, andsort of experience certain kinds
(35:43):
of transformation without therebeing some sort of, you know,
background story at work of theDivine? Right. I think that
that's, I mean, that's aninteresting argument. It's an
interesting article, and, youknow, I think it's interesting
question, and I think it'ssomething that we have to have
on the table. Right. So arethere? You know, are there
atheist spiritualities? Youknow, I think that, you know,
the answer is probably yes.
Right. And I think that'ssomething that we need to think
(36:07):
about lots of authors will makethe Sam Harris is one of these
sort of, you know, debunkers,and atheists who will
nonetheless make the case for anatheist kind of spirituality.
You know, and I think that's,that's interesting. I think
that's something that, you know,we need to think more about.
Chip Gruen (36:23):
It's also interesting, I mean, in my field
where this conversation wouldnaturally go, and you may choose
to chime in on this or not, isthat when you get the divorcing
of the practice of the ritual,from that narrative, that this
very often can become what whatpeople will call appropriation,
(36:47):
right, which will sort of lay atthe feet of, you know, late
capitalist...
Tad Robinson (36:53):
Right.
Chip Gruen (36:54):
...you know, colonial enterprise, right, that
is sort of taking thingsdivorcing them from their
cultural context, and using themfor their own for their own
devices, which I would say, ifwhat you're thinking about is
efficacy, really is not part ofthis question. Right. If you're
thinking about efficacy, or, orthe narratives that people tell
(37:14):
themselves, right, but that,then that's that is to go back
to other terminology, morepolitical and social kind of
question than it isphilosophical question.
Tad Robinson (37:23):
Yeah. I mean, I think I think that there's that
that that seems right. I mean, Iwas just reading something the
other day called an articlecalled "McMindfulness," which is
was just kind of getting to thispoint. Right. You know, and I
don't know, I mean, I do thinkthat there's a philosophical
angle on it, right, in the sensethat you might wonder about,
like, well, what are the ethicsof appropriation here? Right.
But yeah, I think in general,you know, there is this is a
(37:46):
different kind of question. Youknow, that maybe would be more
more naturally fits in, in kindof religion studies or
elsewhere. But, yeah, I mean, Ithink it's really, it's a really
interesting question. I thinkyou can ask that more broadly.
Right. I mean, there are ask thequestion about the separation
between the practice and theunderlying kind of theory behind
it. Right. So there, there isn'tin philosophy, a sort of small
(38:08):
literature on, you know, prayerwithout belief, right? Like,
could you pray to God if youdidn't believe that God exists?
Right? Or if you're agnostic,right. And, you know, I think
I'm trying to think if this istrue, but I think in all of the
literature that I'm aware of theanswer is yes. Right? The
argument is to say like, yeah,it seems weird, but there's no
conceptual obstacle here, right?
In fact, at least a couple ofauthors who argue like, in
(38:31):
certain kinds of cases, atheistsshould pray to God, right. So
the idea being that like, in acase, where, you know, say a
loved one is in a dangeroushealth situation or something
you like, you're a pout, you'repowerless to do anything, right?
And you're atheist, like, theargument is to say, like, hey,
it costs you nothing, right? Toask for help, even if you think
(38:51):
this help, is not there, right.
Like, you know, you ought topursue all av, all possible
avenues towards helping yourchild for example, right. And if
this is an avenue, that helps,then you should engage in it. So
I'm not saying I endorsed thatargument. But I do think that
it's kind of an interesting,interesting kind of argument.
And that's one way that some ofthis the issue that you're
raising kind of cause has comeup in some of the philosophical
(39:14):
literature,
Chip Gruen (39:15):
It seems to me like these are these are not new
questions or not newrealizations. I mean, as you're
talking about this, one of thethings that springs to mind is
people like stealing the hostfrom, you know, a Eucharistic
service and using it for theirown devices for magic or
whatever. It's like yeah, if youreally believe that has the
power that the Church says itdoes, you probably wouldn't be
(39:38):
stealing it. You know, but but,you know, but again, divorcing
it from one kind of narrativeand inserting it into another is
something that we've seen, orall the magic magical tablets
and, and things that are dug upfrom the ancient world, they're
calling on Gods, certainly thesepeople are not adherent to
whether they believe, quote,unquote, in them or not as sort
(39:59):
of a different question.
Tad Robinson (40:00):
I mean, in some ways, it does kind of mirror
right? This conversation aboutlike the term religion, right?
So is religion, you know,something that's always good,
right? Or is religion somethinglike, Hey, just a descriptive
category and there could be likegood categories of religion or
bad categories or religion?
Right, I think we can ask thesame questions about
spirituality, right, where wemight say, like a spiritual, I
just described something thatpeople do, right, that's focused
on their inner lives, right, andtheir efforts to sort of
(40:24):
transform themselves, but like,could there be, you know, ways
of doing that, that are harmfulto others, or harmful to the
self? Right, that don't meet theends that individual set for
themselves? Like, that seemsreasonable to me to say, right.
So I mean, I guess one othernote on this, I mean, you know,
it's not like there aren'tcriticisms of certain kinds of
spirituality out there, like invarious religious traditions.
(40:46):
So, you know, just readingsomething the other day about
extreme fasting, right, where,you know, in the two hundreds
and three hundreds, right, sothe early, early years of sort
of the Christian church, right,there's this question, like,
there's all these aestheticskind of going out, and engaging
in these extreme practices. Andso the kind of question comes up
for Vodius and some of theseother people like, well, you
(41:08):
know, like, how much is toomuch, right. And so, you know,
one of the arguments that kindof comes out during this period
is to say, well, like, to theextent that you're undermining
your ability to kind of focusyour attention on God, right?
Like you're fasting is notserving its purposes. And what's
kind of interesting is, you seeexactly that same objection,
right? In Buddhist discourses,right? Like, what counts for
what counts is sort of going toofar when it comes to your
(41:30):
spiritual practices. So I givethat just as an example of kind
of, you know, I guess what wemight think of as like, intra
religious kind of objections tocertain kinds of spiritual
exercises.
Chip Gruen (41:46):
Is the class spirituality and philosophy, a
replacement for or anaugmentation to your traditional
philosophy of religion course?
Could you imagine a world inwhich both of these in your in
your rotation? Because they'redoing things in a way, that's
different enough? Right, thatthey're getting at different
philosophical questions?
Tad Robinson (42:08):
I wouldn't have said that, at the beginning of
this process, but I would now Imean, you know, one of the
things that, you know, I thinkyou learn as a teacher, you
know, is that good philosophicalquestions come out of concrete
experiences. And, you know, Ithink that framing things in
(42:31):
terms of spiritualityforegrounds, kind of, like the
things that people do. Right.
And I think that everybody inthe class, you know, will have
had some exposure to like thingspeople do, to kind of, you know,
make themselves who they want tobe in some respect, right, in,
in the ways that I'm thinkingabout spirituality, at least.
(42:53):
And so I think that, like, it'llbe a fruitful conversation. But
I think that like a second stepout of that, right, it's like,
Okay, so we've talked aboutspirituality, all of a sudden,
at that point, you might beinterested in say, like, Well,
yeah, but why? What kind ofgrounds do we have for believing
that there is any kind oftranscendent reality? Right,
like, I think that focusing onwhat we do raises that question,
(43:17):
in a sort of much more concreteway than just kind of asking it
in the first place. And so Ithink that, you know, some of
the traditional kind ofphilosophical questions that
come up philosophy of religion,like grow really naturally out
of a substantive discussion ofspirituality in a way that I
hadn't expected. Right. So, youknow, in this course, we
(43:37):
certainly won't talk aboutarguments for the existence of
God in the same way into thesame degree and the same depth
that we would in a traditionalphilosophy of religion course.
But I do expect that at leastsome students will be interested
in those in a way that theywouldn't have been otherwise,
after having, you know, thoughtabout, you know, thought about
spirituality. So I don't know. Imean, I think, I think that goes
for other traditional questionsof religious diversity, you
(44:00):
know, problems of evil, problemsof religious knowledge and so
on. I think that those kinds ofquestions, maybe will have more
force, right, for students atthe end of a class on the
philosophy of spirituality. So Idon't know, we'll see if that's
right. But that's that's kind ofwhat I'm the way that I've been
thinking about it now.
Chip Gruen (44:21):
So, you know, sort of as we get towards conclusion
here, one of the questions thatI mean, sort of guides my work
at the Institute and is thecentral question of
ReligionWise, is thinking aboutenhancing the conversation of
religion in public life, right.
That is one of my premises thatwe don't generally do a very
(44:44):
good job of talking aboutreligious belief and practice,
particularly as it it getsbeyond our own although I would
say that we don't do a very goodjob of talking about that
either. But if we were to movebeyond the academy, right? So
you in the rarefied air of yourown scholarship and talking to
your groups of students, youknow, you deal with these
(45:06):
questions. Do you feel like ifwe could somehow wave a wand,
right, and change the ways thatcategories are understood at the
public policy level, or thegovernmental level, or just in
the public conversation aboutreligion and spirituality? If we
could reframe that conversationalong these lines? I mean, A,
(45:28):
would that be a good thing? AndB, you know, what, what might
that gain for us if we'relooking for a more sophisticated
conversation of belief andpractice in our world?
Tad Robinson (45:41):
Yeah, that seems like a really hard question. So,
I mean, just a couple thoughts.
I mean, on the one hand, Itotally agree that public
discourse about religion in theUnited States is, is poor. It's
really not done very well. And,you know, one of the things that
I sort of think sometimes it'slike, if an alien came down and
only watched kind of, like,popular media, and that was
(46:02):
everything they learned aboutreligion, they would assume that
pretty much like they're in theUnited States, there are, you
know, evangelical Christians,and they're Roman Catholics. And
that's, that's, that coverseverybody. Right. Like, and
there's sort of the other maybe,right. But I think, you know,
that's certainly not the case.
Right, in the in the interestsof people in those groups
themselves are not unified inany case. So yeah, I mean, I, I
(46:25):
totally agree that discourse isnot well done. You know, is
spirituality, a term that mightbe useful? I don't know. Because
I think that that term isalready so broad. You know, one
of the there's a really greatbook on on the sort of history
of the term spirituality, byLucy Bregman, it's called "The
(46:47):
Ecology of Spirituality." Itcame out in 2014, I think, and,
you know, one of the things shedocuments in there, it's like,
as of the, you know, early2000s, she kind of went back and
tried to find, like, how thisterm has been used since the
80s. And she identifies, youknow, 92 different versions of
this term, at work in sort ofhealthcare discourses, right, in
(47:08):
business discourses, inreligious discourses, and
recreation discourse. I mean,it's, it's, it's, it's a term
that gets used in lots ofdifferent ways. So it's, that's
a long way of saying, like, I'mnot sure that that's the term
that's going to improve publicdiscourse, or make it clear, you
know, with the addition of theterm, make, you know, make
(47:31):
things better, maybe, right. Imean, I actually think I think
"none" is pretty good. I mean, Iwould have never said that,
like, the first time I read theword "none" I thought that was
kind of a ridiculous way tocategorize things. But, you
know, having, you know, readsome of the sociological work
trying to capture that term, Idon't know, I've kind of come
around to thinking like, youknow, it does capture something
(47:53):
important that I think, youknow, might improve discourse,
you know, in what kinds of waysI mean, you know, I think one of
the one of the problems is thekind of homogenation in the
sense that, like, when we put acategory on a group, right, then
we can kind of talk about thatgroup as if they were the same
with respect to politics, or thesame with respect to, you know,
(48:16):
other other categories we mightbe interested in. And so, I
mean, having having morecategories, and being able to
split things up, maybe ishelpful to speak to the
diversity of religious life inthe United States and elsewhere.
But, yeah, I don't know. I mean,it's, it's a hard question. I
don't know. That's a couple ofthoughts.
Chip Gruen (48:35):
Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, I see, particularly
because this is sort of some ofthe most public of discourse
about religion happens in, inpolitical and policy circles.
And, and it, it looks like thereis a recognition that the way
that we do it isn't good, butthe answers aren't good, either.
(48:56):
I mean, going back 20 or 30years, you see people replacing
the term religion withfaith-based, right, which is,
you know, in all kinds of waysproblematic about about, you
know, being being built bypeople who are coming usually
from Protestant Christiancircles and have a particular
idea about what that means. Andso it's, you know, people trying
to be more inclusive using thatterm. You know, it's just just
(49:20):
always been a little bitlaughable. So I think maybe if
there's a silver lining, there'sa recognition that we don't do
this well, right. And maybethere's a desire to, to do it
better. So I want to end up witha question I often end up with,
which is, you know, what am Imissing here? Right, like, I
(49:42):
have my particular perspective,I live in my own skin and see
the world from my from mytraining and in my own
experiences. What am I missingabout philosophy, religion,
spirituality that would really,you know, help our listeners
understand what you're afterwhere you're going with, with
(50:05):
the moves that you're making?
Tad Robinson (50:06):
Yeah, I mean, you know what one thing that I would
just add, you know, at the endthat I didn't get a chance to
say earlier, right, it was thesort of thinking about some of
the some of the things thatbecome highlighted or come to
the fore when you sort of thinkabout spirituality as opposed to
religion. And one of the thingsthat I was really surprised by
was the sort of focus on desire,right? So like, desire is
(50:33):
something that philosophers havehad a ton to, say of, to say
about over the years. And it'ssomething that, you know, people
who engage in spiritualexercise, have a ton to say
about too, but I haven't seenthose two literature's kind of
come together at all right? So,you know, when you think about,
you know, Buddhist practices,right, one of the, you know,
(50:55):
it's not just Buddhistpractices, but, you know,
practices based on theUpanishads and so on. Right, you
see this concern aboutattachment? Right? And, and so I
think that there's a sort ofdeep cross cultural focus on the
problems of desire, right, andovercoming it or taming it, or
(51:16):
getting rid of it. That I thinkI just haven't seen a lot of, of
connection to the philosophicalliterature. I mean, this is an
old issue, right? I mean, Platois really, really concerned
about desire, for example,right? And so are philosophers
up through the ages. So, youknow, I think that that's one
one place that I was reallysurprised to discover a real gap
(51:40):
between sort of, we might think,sort of spiritual literatures,
and sort of philosophicalliteratures that I think there's
a fruitful opportunity to bringtogether so that's one thing
that I kind of would add on toto our at the end of our
conversation.
Chip Gruen (51:55):
All right, well, Tad Robinson, thank you so much for
coming on ReligionWise. Asalways, it's been super fun.
Tad Robinson (52:01):
Yeah, thanks for having me. It's great to be
here.
Chip Gruen (52:04):
This has been ReligionWise, a podcast produced
by the Institute for Religiousand Cultural Understanding of
Muhlenberg College. ReligionWiseis produced and directed by
Christine Flicker. For moreinformation about additional
programming, or to make aninquiry about a speaking
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(52:25):
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We look forward to seeing younext time.
Welcome to ReligionWise. I'm your host Chip
Gruen. I'm very excited towelcome back a guest who we've
had on the podcast previously,Dr. Tad Robinson, who is
professor of philosophy here atMuhlenberg College, you might
remember that he talked aboutthe philosophy of religion in
season one, episode four. If youdidn't get a chance to listen to
that episode, I invite you to goback and listen, not that it's
(00:27):
necessary for this conversation,but can provide a little bit of
context and additionalinformation on the philosophy of
religion more generally. Thereason that he's back today,
though, is that he, through hisrecent scholarship and teaching
is reframing some of thosequestions from philosophy of
religion, and considering themfrom a new angle. The central
(00:49):
way he's doing this is thinkingabout these things as spiritual
practice as thinking aboutspirituality rather than
religion. And this is reallyimportant. And I think we
teaching the liberal artscollege get a front row view of
this is that in the last fewdecades, the percentage of
people who don't claim religiousaffiliation or religious
(01:10):
identity in their matriculationmaterials has gone up
dramatically from the mid singledigits to about 40% of students
entering. So the old cliche isthat people will say that they
are spiritual, but notreligious. Dr. Robinson is
taking that question seriously.
And reframing a lot of thequestions that he asks about
(01:31):
religious belief and practice,along the lines of what we might
think of as more individual,less institutional, less
corporate structures. So forexample, the practice of prayer,
meditation, yoga, other thingsthat people might do outside of
a religious institution, andthey just do on their own. And
(01:53):
so the set of questions that heasks about those practices, is
oftentimes very different thanwhat we might think of when we
think of questions, philosophyof religion questions from a
traditional perspective. Theother reason I find this topic
really interesting, and I findDr. Robinson to be a great
interlocutor for me, is thatbeing a religious studies
(02:15):
professor who is influenced alot by history of religions,
sociological methods,anthropological methods, the
questions that he asks are justfundamentally different. Now,
religious studies as a fieldcast a very wide net, and can
include a lot of differentmethods. But the kinds of
questions that he asked and thekinds of analysis that he does
(02:37):
just differs really radicallyfrom the kinds of things I think
about with students in myclasses, or in my own writing
and research. The final note Iwant to make here is just a note
of clarity, because this isaudio only you might not pick up
on the usage of a word. And thatword is "nones," we refer to it
(02:58):
quite a lot. And it's explaineda little bit but I just want to
make it really clear. When werefer to "nones" that is n o n e
s, meaning those people who marktheir religious affiliation as
"none." This is a term that yousee used in polling, in data
collection, that people willmark "none" as, or wright "none"
(03:21):
as a religious affiliation. Andso they have sometimes been
referred to as the "nones,"which of course is in contrast
to nuns, n u n s, the Catholicfemale religious individuals who
live a life dedicated to God the"nones" n o n e s and the nuns n
u n s are obviously very, verydifferent and distinct from one
(03:44):
another. So just that point ofclarity as you listen to the
episode. I hope you enjoylistening to episode as much as
I've enjoyed thinking about itwith Dr. Robinson. Tad Robinson,
thanks for coming onReligionWise.
Tad Robinson (04:00):
Well thanks for having me.
Chip Gruen (04:01):
So astute listeners will remember that you were on
season one, episode four. Andthe title of that episode was
philosophy of religion. And wetalked about this subfield of
philosophy, which is, of course,the context of your own
professional work and thecontext of our conversation
today, but in your recentresearch and course design,
(04:22):
you're choosing to focus not onreligion as the category of
central concern, but instead onthe word or on the category
spirituality. Why did you chooseto reframe the way that you
consider belief and practicearound that term spirituality
instead of religion?
Tad Robinson (04:38):
Yeah, I mean, I was thinking about this
initially, primarily in terms ofkind of meeting students where
they were with respect to thecourse, philosophy of religion
course. And, you know, one ofthe things I had noticed was
that the term religion, youknow, has, over the last few
years in particular kind of cometo connote a set of institutions
(05:02):
or ideas about institutions andrules and things that students
just weren't very interested in.
And so I was sort of thinkingabout ways to kind of meet them
where they were at. And so Ithought, well, you know,
students and the public atlarge, seem to see spirituality
in much more positive terms,people are interested in
spirituality, this is a termthat kind of has a positive
(05:24):
valence with people. And so Iwas thinking, Well, you know,
what if I kind of reframed thecourse, with a different title,
and maybe just change some ofthe terminology, and I think,
initially, I was thinking Icould teach a philosophy of
religion course, titled areframed around spirituality. So
that was the initial idea. Youknow, but when I made the
(05:44):
decision to do that, and startedreally getting into the nitty
gritty of like, okay, well, I'mgonna have to have a, you know,
an account of kind of whatspirituality is, in kind of
general, and maybe how thatdiffers a little bit from
religion, as we frame it as Iframe the course for students.
You know, I started to realize,like, you know, that this
framing affords some newopportunities for thinking
about, you know, philosophicaltopics, right. And so, that was
(06:07):
where I sort of started off. Soonce I started thinking about
this, I thought, Okay, well,what, what is, what is
spirituality, right? Andobviously, this is a super
complicated term, it means amillion things to, to a million
different people. And so I hadto kind of circumscribe this a
little bit. And so, as I wasthinking about what spirituality
(06:29):
is, or at least a way thatoperationalize it for the
course, you know, I startedthinking about well, okay, one,
like, people use this term, youknow, in a really general way.
So however we think aboutspirituality, it's gotta be what
I would call kind oftransreligious, right. So it's
got to be something that we cantalk about, a Buddhist
spirituality, and a new agespirituality, and maybe a
(06:51):
secular spirituality, and atraditional, more sort of
traditional kind of Westernkinds of spirituality. So that
was one kind of limitation.
Another kind of limitation was,you know, had to do with the
fact that, like, why do peoplecare about spirituality? You
know, my sense is that, youknow, people are motivated to
think about spirituality, youknow, because there's some sort
(07:13):
of problem, right, that, youknow, they sort of sense that
there's some sort of gapbetween, like the way the world
is, and the way it could be orshould be, right. And so I think
that, that that's a sort ofreally general way of talking
about an experience a lot of ushave, probably a lot of the
time, which is just to say,like, why are things this way?
(07:33):
Or why did I do that? And notthat or I wish I hadn't done
that? Or, here's something Icould do in the future, like,
what am I going to have to do?
So there's sort of this gapbetween the way the world is and
the way it could or should bethat I think we're constantly
navigating. And that's, I think,a pretty deep element of the
human condition, in a sense,right. So I think that that does
connect well, with kind of whypeople will be looking towards
(07:55):
spirituality or looking forspirituality. Kind of a third
element that I was thinkingabout was, you know, how
spirituality might differ from,you know, like a life hack,
right? Or how spiritually mightdiffer from like, an
intervention like psychologicalintervention or clinical
(08:15):
intervention, right? In thesense that like, yeah, people
have lots of problems, right.
And so, there's different waysof approaching those. So how
does spirituality differ inthese kinds of ways? And differ
from these kinds of phenomena?
And, you know, I think, youknow, as I was thinking about
it, and reading about this, weone of the things that
spirituality seems to be, atleast for many people, is about
sort of fundamental changes tokind of who we are, right, and
(08:41):
the way we understand things,right. So, you know, these
aren't intended sort of shortterm fixes, right? You know,
they're not intended to dealwith what we might think was
like pathological problemsthere. These are sort of, you
know, efforts to deal with theworld, you know, in light of
kind of who we are, in somesense. And then sort of the last
thing that was kind of drivingme was this observation, like,
(09:02):
spirituality is totallypractical, right, that
spirituality, you know, is sortof most sort of paradigmatically
kind of exemplified in practiceslike prayer and meditation, and
yoga, and, you know, fasting andall these kinds of things that
we associate with kind ofreligious practice, I think. So,
kind of taking all that intoaccount. I was like, Okay, well,
let's let's operationalizespirituality for the purposes of
(09:24):
this course, you know, in termsof a positive effort. So what I
ended up doing in terms ofoperationalizing, the term for
the course. And my thinking, wasto think about it this way,
right? To think aboutspirituality as a practical
orientation toward a morefulfilled and harmonious life.
And sort of in a little moredetail, the idea is to
(09:45):
understand it as an orientationtowards a life where somebody's
actions and desires andunderstanding and priorities and
emotions cohere not only withone another, but with the way
the world is, and with thosethings that are recognized as
substantively valuable withinit.
Chip Gruen (10:03):
Wow, that sounds like a philosophers defintiion.
Tad Robinson (10:04):
Hey, you know...
Chip Gruen (10:06):
So I want to follow up on this a little bit. Because
you, I mean, if I'munderstanding correctly, like on
the one hand that there wasalmost a market driven approach
to thinking about the coursephilosophy of religion, and as
you said, meeting studentswhere, where they're at. And so
(10:27):
that demanded a sort of acategorical reconstruction of
how you're approaching thecourse. But on the other hand,
you are approaching, I thinkyou'll agree is a somewhat
similar body of materialreframed from a different
perspective. So I guess I wantto get at your your strategy
(10:47):
here. I mean, is that are theequal parts of those things? Is
this about marketability? Or doyou fundamentally see these
beliefs and practices theseapproaches in a different way?
As you have sought to reframethe category?
Tad Robinson (11:03):
Yeah, I mean, I think both. And it was
unexpected, that that thereframing this would have
significant consequences forthinking about traditional
topics and traditionalphilosophical questions. Right.
So yeah, I mean, I think, youknow, just to just to give a
couple of examples, right? Imean, so on the one hand, I
(11:24):
think that you can do a lot ofwhat you might normally do in a
traditional philosophy ofreligion course, in a course on
philosophy and spirituality, orphilosophy of spirituality. But
I think that like those kind oftraditional topics, you know,
arguments for God's existence,for example, right, or problem
of evil, right? These become notthe primary questions, they
(11:45):
don't become the first questionsthat come up, right? So. So if
you're thinking aboutspirituality, and you're
thinking about, like, you know,a person kind of trying to
transform their lives in lightof their their values, and, you
know, what they regard to betrue? The questions are human
centered, as opposed to kind of,you know, universe centered or
external centered. And so, youknow, for example, you're gonna
(12:09):
have to focus on Well, what isit that people do? Right? So,
you know, what are thesespiritual practices or spiritual
exercises? And why do people dothose things? Right, in
particular, as opposed tosomething else? Right. And when
you ask those kinds ofquestions, you know, issues of
like, what the self is kind ofcome up automatically, because
the question is, well, you know,you're transforming yourself,
(12:30):
well, what is that? Right? Andso, you know, looking back at
the history of philosophy, youknow, you see lots of different
kinds of stories about what selftransformation is, right? So,
you know, to give a couple ofexamples, one you might think of
self transformation is selfdiscovery, right? So there's a
lot of discussion in thecontemporary world, right about
(12:51):
like, finding the true self,where that is, like, Hey, your
true self is there, you justkind of dig it out. Right. And
another model, thinking aboutthat is sort of self mastery.
Right? So where the idea isthat, hey, the individual is
this disjointed, or multifacetedsort of being and then what we
need to do, in order to masterthe self is kind of push aside,
(13:13):
those parts of us that don'tcontribute to our well being or
our flourishing, or aren't areinconsistent with our values?
Right? There's another way ofthinking about this
transformation in terms ofcreation of the self, right? So
where, hey, the self is not thispre existing thing like you make
yourself right. So we see thisin certain existentialist kinds
of writers, but also withcontemporary kinds of narrative
(13:34):
identity and so on. So, youknow, that's one kind of case.
Another kind of case has to dowith self knowledge, again, a
traditional philosophicalsubject that goes back to
Socrates. Right, but notsomething that typically comes
up in a philosophy of religioncourse. So what does that mean?
Well, you know, when it comes toself knowledge, one of the
things that comes out, at leastin a lot of discussions of
(13:55):
spiritual practices, sort of howwe don't know what's going on,
inside of us, sometimes we don'tknow what we want, right? We
don't know what we really value,right? And that part of this
process of digging things out,you know, is coming to know the
self, right? And that's it.
There's an interesting kind ofdiscussion there
philosophically, becausephilosophers have for a long
time, sort of taken selfknowledge to be something pretty
(14:16):
easy, right? But at leastaccording to a lot of people
writing on spiritual practices,for example, it's it's really
not right. So there's aninteresting philosophical
question there that I thinkgrows right out of these
questions of, if we're gonnafocus on spirituality. And
there's some other steps that wecan talk about, but that's just
a couple of examples.
Chip Gruen (14:36):
So I want to get a sense, obviously, as you
indicate a lot of the questionsthat you're digging into are
questions that have backgrounds,philosophical backgrounds,
right? There's reading there arethinkers there are people who
have thought about these, thoughmaybe not exactly in the context
of philosophy of religion,right. So I'm curious about how
(14:59):
much of of what you're doing,again, in both the paper you
presented at the AmericanAcademy of Religion, and in this
course redesign is a part of thecontemporary trends in
philosophy of religion, or isthis Tad Robinson using the
freedom of being a professor ata liberal arts college to do and
(15:22):
formulate, and imagine the worldin new and creative ways, apart
from sort of major trends thatare going on in the field?
Tad Robinson (15:31):
You know, I think, you know, on the one hand, it is
it is sort of, you know, amatter of me sort of trying to
plow ahead and sort of find anew way of thinking, right. That
said, I mean, there certainly,you know, I certainly had
resources to draw on. Right. So,just to give a couple examples,
Robert Solomon, who's a, youknow, pretty well known
(15:51):
philosopher, the University ofTexas, you know, wrote a wrote a
book called "Spirituality forthe Skeptic," you know, back in
the early 2000s, right, there'sbeen a number of edited
collections that have come outon on spirituality. You know,
there's a recent book that wemight talk about a little later
by this philosopher namedTerence Cuneo called "Ritualized
Faith," right, which focuses onkind of liturgical practices in
(16:13):
the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Right. So there is a sort of,you know, burgeoning is maybe
overt, overstating it right. Butthere is, I think, an interest
in in an increasing interest insort of thinking about
spirituality, maybe not asopposed to religion or
philosophy of religion, right.
(16:33):
But, you know, in conjunctionwith, so, you know, yeah,
there's that. And I've had theopportunity to draw on a lot of
that material that said, right,the way that I'm thinking about
this in terms of atransformation of models of the
transformation of self, modelsof self knowledge, right, maybe
thinking about philosophy ofhabit, for example, you know,
these are, in some ways, stuffthat I'm having to kind of come
(16:55):
up with and dig out andreformulate and frame myself.
Chip Gruen (16:58):
So I want to go back, I mean, and listeners of
the podcast, will, will knowthat I am particularly
interested in some of the thingsthat you I won't say threw away,
but some of the things that youdismissed as being principle to
philosophy of religion, that youare defocusing...
Tad Robinson (17:17):
Right.
Chip Gruen (17:17):
...institutions, certain kinds of rules, or
regulations, or structures, andreligious studies as a field,
you know, it's very heavilyinst, influenced by sociology
and anthropology that reallycenter on those kinds of things.
Tad Robinson (17:34):
Right.
Chip Gruen (17:35):
So I want to, you know, maybe do a disciplinary
contrast here...
...or just thinkabout the ways in which you
Tad Robinson (17:41):
Yeah.
imagined some of those thingsthat are traditionally in the
field of religious studies ofsocial institutions, social
roles, determined identities,ethics, all of those sorts of
things. And to see where you seethis approach, overlapping or
not overlapping? Or how, forexample, a philosophy of
(18:05):
spirituality would think about,say, hierarchy or structure, or
those questions that you're sortof leaving aside for other
disciplines or other courses.
Yeah. I mean, youknow, it is true, like focusing
on spirituality, at least asI'm, as I'm thinking about it is
focused on kind of individualsinner lives. Right. And so it is
(18:29):
opposed, in some sense, or atleast doesn't really necessarily
draw on sort of sociological orpolitical understandings of of
humans, right. So that's, youknow, that's, that's the case.
Right? So just to give anexample of how that might play
out, right, I mean, so say, wewant to think about meditate
(18:50):
meditation, right? And so we'rethinking, well, what are the
philosophical questions aboutlike meditative practices?
Right? And so we might thinkabout, like, Well, I mean,
meditation, there's lots ofmanuals about meditation, right?
There's lots of sort of, mayberulebook is the wrong word, but
you know, texts that suggestparticular ways of meditating
for particular kinds of reasons,a particular kind of times in
(19:10):
particular kinds of goals,right? And so, you know, as a
philosopher, we can kind of lookat that we can also look at
like, why, you know, to theextent that we have access to
this, you know, why doindividuals engage in this? What
are individuals think they'redoing when they're when they're
doing this, right? So all ofthose are kind of, you know,
starting with individual actionsor sort of, you know, texts that
sort of tell us about why anindividual might want to do
(19:32):
this, right from a sociologicalor anthropological perspective,
we might say, Yeah, but Tad,like why people do things is not
always clear to them, right? Andwe might sociologists,
anthropologist might say, hey,the the sort of social forces,
the external forces that areacting on a person, right,
that's what's really drivingtheir action, right, or their
(19:52):
culture is really driving theiraction, like what they think
they're doing, you know, insidetheir own minds is maybe not an
accurate story about why they'redoing what they're doing. Right.
And I would just say like, youknow, people are complicated,
right? And so, hey, from, youknow, from the perspective that
I'm going to start with, right,we're going to start with like,
what does what do these peoplethink they're doing? Why are
(20:13):
they doing it? As opposed tosort of a sociological or
anthropological perspective thatsays, oh, you know, they're
really, you know, they're reallyengaging in something else,
right? Maybe they are, right?
But we can certainly start withwhat what kinds of reasons they
think they're, you know, aredriving their action.
Chip Gruen (20:29):
So let me give you a critique, I'll see how you how
you how you think about this,because one of the directions
that you seem to be going seemsto be heavily influenced by
psychology, psychology ofreligion, and I wonder how much
that work is influencing whatyou're thinking and how you're
(20:50):
thinking it. Because if we'rethinking about how people's
internal processes are working,or how they think that they're
working on themselves, like,those seem to be psychological
questions. So that's part one.
And part two, I will, I willoften say to my students, I have
the privilege of teaching mytheory and method in the study
of religion, this coming term,and when we get to the
psychology of religion section,one of the critiques I offer to
(21:14):
them after we've gone throughand, and thought about some of
these thinkers, is that the onlyway we can get to the inner
workings of somebody, aspiritual or religious person
talking about their their ownpractice is in fact, the talking
about it, right? The formulatingit, the the self reporting that
is done. And the case I alwaystry to make for my students is
(21:38):
that that is a public act initself, right? Like how one
constructs the story of whatthey're doing, or the narrative
of their own spiritual practiceis itself a performative thing
that gets you a little bit awayfrom psychology and more into
maybe anthropology or sociology.
Tad Robinson (21:59):
Um hmm, yeah.
Chip Gruen (21:59):
So So tell me about the confluences that you have
with psychology, and how youwould respond to that idea of
sort of the public performanceof the stories that people tell.
Tad Robinson (22:08):
Yeah, I mean, I would say that it's like, the
approach that I'm I'm pursuingis sort of like a psychological
approach to religion in thesense that it's focused on the
individual, right, as opposed tosort of a larger group, and that
it's focused on kind of theinner kind of life. Right, you
know, it's not psychological inthe sense that it's not an
empir... you know, not engagingempirical methods, right. at
(22:30):
all, but yeah, there's certainlyan overlap. And some of the
topics that I, you know, I'll betaking up are certainly what we
would call in philosophy, moralpsychology, right? So, questions
of compassion and gratitude, andso on. So, you know, there is
there is an overlap and in someway, you know, that said, Right,
I mean, with respect to the sortof point about, you know,
creating, creating one's sort ofinner life by telling the story
(22:52):
about it. I mean, I think that,that actually is something that
comes out in thinking abouthabits and self transformation.
Right? So, one of the one of thethings that is sort of
philosophy 101 is sort ofAristotle's account of the
virtues Right? And how, how you,you how you become brave, right?
And so Aristotle story about howyou become brave is not that,
(23:14):
like you decide to become braveand start thinking brave
thoughts. Right? It's like, youstart acting like brave people
act, right. And by acting likebrave people act, you become
brave, and you take on thebeliefs and dispositions of
someone who is courageous,right, by acting like courageous
people do, right? So one of thesort of storylines that we kind
(23:35):
of get, and I think this is areal tension among philosophers,
and I think a lot of people isthis sort of dynamic between
inner and outer, right? Or sortof Aristotle's sort of theory,
the virtues, and other peoplehave picked us up in varieties,
a variety of ways, right? Is tosay, like, hey, to change the
inner, you need to change theouter first, right? And so, you
know, we don't always sort ofthink about things that way, we
(23:57):
sort of sometimes think like,well, I want to be different, I
should just sort of change,change my, my inside, right, I
need to change my beliefs, Ineed to change my dispositions
and, and sort of the recognitionthat Aristotle has right is to
say, You can't do that directly,right, you can only change the
inside by changing the outside,in certain kinds of ways, right.
(24:17):
And so I think, like your pointabout, like, telling the story,
in some ways as an example ofthat, right, and there's lots of
examples like that. So there's asort of famous example of John
Stuart Mill in hisautobiography. So it tells a
story about this mentalbreakdown he has, and he sort of
comes to this this conclusion.
He says, like, I just realized,like, you can't just make
yourself happy, right? Like youhave to do, you can't focus on
(24:39):
hap... you can't try to behappy, right? You have to try to
do something else. And happinessis sort of a sort of byproduct,
right? of pursuing the rightkinds of things. Right. And so I
think that that that idea ofsort of, is related, right,
where if you want to do certainkinds of things, specifically
things related to your innerlife, right and changing kind of
(25:01):
who you are, you can't decide todo those, you can't aim to do
that. Right, you have to dosomething else. And as the
byproduct, those changes willhappen. Right. So, yeah, I mean,
I think, you know, the exampleyou're talking about is
precisely one of those. But Idon't think everything's like
that. But I think lots of caseswhen it comes to spirituality
are.
Chip Gruen (25:20):
Okay. So if we take that example, again, of, you
know, the story that people tellabout their own inner lives,
right as being something that issort of discoverable. And we can
use as a basis for thinking in anumber of different ways. It's
interesting to me to think aboutto return to our student
(25:42):
population. And I think that wecan extrapolate out a little bit
from our student population tothink about Gen Z, obviously, we
teach people mostly who are the18 to 22 year old set, though,
not exclusively, that theirthinking on a lot of these
questions is different than itwas say, when we were 18 to 22
(26:04):
year old years old, or whenboomers or the silent generation
or the greatest generation were18 to 22 year old, years old.
And I've made a little bit of astudy of this just looking at
the demographic trends of thematriculation data when our
students come in that when wecame to Muhlenberg that the
story was that the populationwas a third Jewish and a third
(26:26):
Catholic, and a third of kind ofeverything else, which is, I
don't know, not the way that wethink about religious diversity
these days. But that was alwaysthe story that was told. And now
if you look at that demographicinformation, something like 40%
don't affiliate at all, youknow, and we could talk about,
(26:47):
you know, where those peoplewould have been 20 years ago, or
whatever. But that this, I thinkthat this phenomenon of the
"nones," the no religiousaffiliation, which we could talk
about as being connected to ornot connected to institutions
and rules. But that thesepeople, it's not as if they
(27:08):
don't think about the largerquestions of meaning, and the
good life, and all of thosesorts of things. But I'm just,
I'm curious to get yourthoughts, you know, on, on this
population that we have a lot ofcontact with, and here not so
much from a marketingperspective. But, you know, how
(27:29):
are humans, at least humans, youknow, that we that we encounter
in a northeastern liberal artscollege, changing the way that
they tell those personalnarratives about meaning and
order and identity, and how doesthat connect to this reframing
that you're doing?
Tad Robinson (27:48):
Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, the way
that, you know, sociologists,others would talk about this as
the rise of the "nones," right.
So, you know, this change in theway that the American or the
North American or the Westernkind of populations are thinking
about religion, You know, Ithink that that does play a role
here. Right. So in saying, youknow, as we were starting off
(28:10):
and saying that, you know,students have sort of started to
think about religion in sort ofways that I wouldn't have when I
was, you know, 20 or 30, or 40.
You know, I think that that doeshave to do with this shift
that's contributing to "nones,"right. So yeah, I think that's,
that's relevant. And, you know,I think you're also exactly
(28:31):
right to say like, simplybecause an individual isa "none"
right. And so no longer, youknow, identifies themselves with
a specific, you know, religiouslabel, right. Like, that doesn't
mean that all of a sudden, likethe kinds of questions that, you
know, people who traditionallywe would call religious right,
have or or, or thinking about,right, they don't lose those,
(28:53):
right. I mean, I think there arecertainly some people out there
that, you know, are totallyuninterested, right, who might
count as a "none." Right, but Ithink a lot of "nones," n o n e
right, a lot of "nones" youknow, really do have these same
kinds of questions about like,you know, what's, you know,
what's my place in the universe?
Right, you know, how do I fitin? How do I understand
suffering? And, you know, howshould I live? And what's good,
(29:15):
right? I think all of thesequestions are pretty, pretty
common. And simply because oneno longer identifies with a
particular category. It's notlike these questions disappear.
So yeah, I mean, I think, youknow, people are as hungry as
they always have for these tothink about these kinds of
things. They're just thinkingabout them, yeah, under
different different kinds oflabels or in different kinds of
ways.
Chip Gruen (29:36):
It's kind of interesting coming into this
conversation I didn't think thatthese things were connected at
all, but I guess I'm just goingthrough the catalog of courses.
I'm teaching this term but theother course I'm teaching is
religion and popular culture.
And one of the premises of thatcourse, is that just because
people are not, or may notnecessarily be traditional
religious, doesn't mean thatThey're not thinking about those
(30:00):
questions. And believe it or notTaylor Swift or, you know, the
the latest limited series on HBOcan contribute to people's
feelings or exploration aboutthe purpose of life or what the
good life is, or any number ofother questions.
Tad Robinson (30:19):
Right.
Chip Gruen (30:20):
You know, that may have been met traditionally in
religious institutions or byreligious leadership. So it
seems like we are kind ofchewing on different sides of
the same bone here a little bit.
Tad Robinson (30:33):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the thing that I think is,
I guess I've sort of reframingkind of what I'm doing in
courses and rethinking aboutkind of what the goal is, right?
is, you know, there are 1000s ofyears of people's reflections on
these big questions, which Ithink that, you know, a student,
(30:53):
right, who sees themselves as a"none" or, you know, doesn't
identify with logician mightmiss out on the opportunity to
explore, right, because theyassociate the term religion
right with, with solelyinstitutions or solely rules,
and so on. Right. And so I thinkI think that spirituality like
the term spirituality presentsan opportunity, right to connect
(31:16):
people with questions to some ofhistory's you know, great kind
of thinkers, right about thesedifficult questions. So, I mean,
yeah, I mean, the hunger forthese to think about these
questions is still there, youknow, people's thoughts about
them are still there. Right. Youknow, I think spirituality that
moniker is one way of trying tobring bring those two things
(31:38):
together from it from apedagogical point of view.
Chip Gruen (31:41):
Yeah, so you, you use the terms in your research
and teaching nondoxastic. And orsecular, I think, to try to
capture some of this. And Ithink I mean, I will say,
nondoxastic is a new one for me,I don't think I've seen that in
print before. But secular,certainly people will be
(32:03):
familiar with. How, I mean, whatdo these terms mean for you in
the work that you're doing? Andhow are they relevant towards
asking, asking some of thesequestions, in particular
secular, because that word isused a lot and loosely and
sometimes pejoratively, in sortof mainstream discourse?
Tad Robinson (32:21):
Yeah. Right. So, you know, by nondoxastic, right,
just, you know, doxa meansbelieve, right? So we're just
talking about kind of nonbelief.
Right. And so, in using thatterm, what I want to get at is
the idea that, you know, aperson might engage in certain
kinds of spiritual exerciseswithout, you know, a
substantive, systematic body ofbelief about the nature of the
(32:42):
universe and so on. Right. Youknow, and the same with with
secularity, right, in the sense,I, you know, I'm sort of using
that term in a simplified way,just to mean, hey, you know,
engaging in these practices in away that does not presuppose,
you know, any kind of specificversion of the good, or of the
nature of reality or anything,right. So, what I want to
(33:06):
capture is simply the idea that,you know, people might be in
this place, right, where theynotice in their lives a gap
between the way things are andthe way they could or should be,
and they sort of, you know, inintuitively, perhaps even right,
sort of try to take some steps,right to to bridge that gap, and
(33:27):
sort of, you know, make stepstowards self transformation,
right? You know, that I thinkpeople can totally legitimately
do that right, without havingany larger body or a very
specific body of outside belief.
So that's what I'm trying totrying to get and kind of get
at, right. Because in myexperience, and I think this,
(33:48):
this comes out in some of theresearch on "nones," right, it's
the, you know, there are peoplewho are just fundamentally
suspicious of any kind ofuniversal claims about the
world, right? Or who are notinterested in investigating
those, right, yet, at the sametime, right, might be interested
in exploring sort of spiritualpractices or spiritual
exercises. And so like, I thinkthat's a really important group
(34:12):
of people to make sure thatwe're talking to and thinking
about, you know, and so thatthat's sort of the root of that
kind of language.
Chip Gruen (34:20):
So let me give you an example to kind of flesh this
out. Like we might imaginesomebody who participates in a
yoga regimen, right? Is a verystaunchly interested in the
practice of yoga and goes anddoes this all the time.
Tad Robinson (34:35):
Right.
Chip Gruen (34:35):
But might then also call themselves an atheist.
Tad Robinson (34:38):
Right.
Chip Gruen (34:38):
Right? And so that, on the one hand, that would be a
spiritual practice that is doingsomething that in the words that
you've used as transformation ofthe self or self discovery or
what have you...
Tad Robinson (34:49):
Right.
Chip Gruen (34:50):
But on the other hand, is not tied to anything
that I would call a cosmologicalpresence out there somewhere.
Tad Robinson (34:57):
Right. Yeah, and I think I mean, so So I think some
people would say, Well, youknow, that's not spirituality.
Right. That's health. Right. Youknow, that's, and I think that
that's a that's an openquestion. Right. So one of the
things I think it's reallyimportant not to do, you know,
when we start reframing thingsis to, is to answer questions
(35:18):
before we've asked them, right,or to answer questions by fiat,
by definition. Right. And sowhen thinking about spiritually,
like, is that, is that a form ofspirituality? Yeah, I mean, I
think that that's an openquestion. So I was just reading
something yesterday where anauthor was, you know,
considering like, Hey, couldyou, you know, could you engage
in yoga? Right, without, andsort of experience certain kinds
(35:43):
of transformation without therebeing some sort of, you know,
background story at work of theDivine? Right. I think that
that's, I mean, that's aninteresting argument. It's an
interesting article, and, youknow, I think it's interesting
question, and I think it'ssomething that we have to have
on the table. Right. So arethere? You know, are there
atheist spiritualities? Youknow, I think that, you know,
the answer is probably yes.
Right. And I think that'ssomething that we need to think
(36:07):
about lots of authors will makethe Sam Harris is one of these
sort of, you know, debunkers,and atheists who will
nonetheless make the case for anatheist kind of spirituality.
You know, and I think that's,that's interesting. I think
that's something that, you know,we need to think more about.
Chip Gruen (36:23):
It's also interesting, I mean, in my field
where this conversation wouldnaturally go, and you may choose
to chime in on this or not, isthat when you get the divorcing
of the practice of the ritual,from that narrative, that this
very often can become what whatpeople will call appropriation,
(36:47):
right, which will sort of lay atthe feet of, you know, late
capitalist...
Tad Robinson (36:53):
Right.
Chip Gruen (36:54):
...you know, colonial enterprise, right, that
is sort of taking thingsdivorcing them from their
cultural context, and using themfor their own for their own
devices, which I would say, ifwhat you're thinking about is
efficacy, really is not part ofthis question. Right. If you're
thinking about efficacy, or, orthe narratives that people tell
(37:14):
themselves, right, but that,then that's that is to go back
to other terminology, morepolitical and social kind of
question than it isphilosophical question.
Tad Robinson (37:23):
Yeah. I mean, I think I think that there's that
that that seems right. I mean, Iwas just reading something the
other day called an articlecalled "McMindfulness," which is
was just kind of getting to thispoint. Right. You know, and I
don't know, I mean, I do thinkthat there's a philosophical
angle on it, right, in the sensethat you might wonder about,
like, well, what are the ethicsof appropriation here? Right.
But yeah, I think in general,you know, there is this is a
(37:46):
different kind of question. Youknow, that maybe would be more
more naturally fits in, in kindof religion studies or
elsewhere. But, yeah, I mean, Ithink it's really, it's a really
interesting question. I thinkyou can ask that more broadly.
Right. I mean, there are ask thequestion about the separation
between the practice and theunderlying kind of theory behind
it. Right. So there, there isn'tin philosophy, a sort of small
(38:08):
literature on, you know, prayerwithout belief, right? Like,
could you pray to God if youdidn't believe that God exists?
Right? Or if you're agnostic,right. And, you know, I think
I'm trying to think if this istrue, but I think in all of the
literature that I'm aware of theanswer is yes. Right? The
argument is to say like, yeah,it seems weird, but there's no
conceptual obstacle here, right?
In fact, at least a couple ofauthors who argue like, in
(38:31):
certain kinds of cases, atheistsshould pray to God, right. So
the idea being that like, in acase, where, you know, say a
loved one is in a dangeroushealth situation or something
you like, you're a pout, you'repowerless to do anything, right?
And you're atheist, like, theargument is to say, like, hey,
it costs you nothing, right? Toask for help, even if you think
(38:51):
this help, is not there, right.
Like, you know, you ought topursue all av, all possible
avenues towards helping yourchild for example, right. And if
this is an avenue, that helps,then you should engage in it. So
I'm not saying I endorsed thatargument. But I do think that
it's kind of an interesting,interesting kind of argument.
And that's one way that some ofthis the issue that you're
raising kind of cause has comeup in some of the philosophical
(39:14):
literature,
Chip Gruen (39:15):
It seems to me like these are these are not new
questions or not newrealizations. I mean, as you're
talking about this, one of thethings that springs to mind is
people like stealing the hostfrom, you know, a Eucharistic
service and using it for theirown devices for magic or
whatever. It's like yeah, if youreally believe that has the
power that the Church says itdoes, you probably wouldn't be
(39:38):
stealing it. You know, but but,you know, but again, divorcing
it from one kind of narrativeand inserting it into another is
something that we've seen, orall the magic magical tablets
and, and things that are dug upfrom the ancient world, they're
calling on Gods, certainly thesepeople are not adherent to
whether they believe, quote,unquote, in them or not as sort
(39:59):
of a different question.
Tad Robinson (40:00):
I mean, in some ways, it does kind of mirror
right? This conversation aboutlike the term religion, right?
So is religion, you know,something that's always good,
right? Or is religion somethinglike, Hey, just a descriptive
category and there could be likegood categories of religion or
bad categories or religion?
Right, I think we can ask thesame questions about
spirituality, right, where wemight say, like a spiritual, I
just described something thatpeople do, right, that's focused
on their inner lives, right, andtheir efforts to sort of
(40:24):
transform themselves, but like,could there be, you know, ways
of doing that, that are harmfulto others, or harmful to the
self? Right, that don't meet theends that individual set for
themselves? Like, that seemsreasonable to me to say, right.
So I mean, I guess one othernote on this, I mean, you know,
it's not like there aren'tcriticisms of certain kinds of
spirituality out there, like invarious religious traditions.
(40:46):
So, you know, just readingsomething the other day about
extreme fasting, right, where,you know, in the two hundreds
and three hundreds, right, sothe early, early years of sort
of the Christian church, right,there's this question, like,
there's all these aestheticskind of going out, and engaging
in these extreme practices. Andso the kind of question comes up
for Vodius and some of theseother people like, well, you
(41:08):
know, like, how much is toomuch, right. And so, you know,
one of the arguments that kindof comes out during this period
is to say, well, like, to theextent that you're undermining
your ability to kind of focusyour attention on God, right?
Like you're fasting is notserving its purposes. And what's
kind of interesting is, you seeexactly that same objection,
right? In Buddhist discourses,right? Like, what counts for
what counts is sort of going toofar when it comes to your
(41:30):
spiritual practices. So I givethat just as an example of kind
of, you know, I guess what wemight think of as like, intra
religious kind of objections tocertain kinds of spiritual
exercises.
Chip Gruen (41:46):
Is the class spirituality and philosophy, a
replacement for or anaugmentation to your traditional
philosophy of religion course?
Could you imagine a world inwhich both of these in your in
your rotation? Because they'redoing things in a way, that's
different enough? Right, thatthey're getting at different
philosophical questions?
Tad Robinson (42:08):
I wouldn't have said that, at the beginning of
this process, but I would now Imean, you know, one of the
things that, you know, I thinkyou learn as a teacher, you
know, is that good philosophicalquestions come out of concrete
experiences. And, you know, Ithink that framing things in
(42:31):
terms of spiritualityforegrounds, kind of, like the
things that people do. Right.
And I think that everybody inthe class, you know, will have
had some exposure to like thingspeople do, to kind of, you know,
make themselves who they want tobe in some respect, right, in,
in the ways that I'm thinkingabout spirituality, at least.
(42:53):
And so I think that, like, it'llbe a fruitful conversation. But
I think that like a second stepout of that, right, it's like,
Okay, so we've talked aboutspirituality, all of a sudden,
at that point, you might beinterested in say, like, Well,
yeah, but why? What kind ofgrounds do we have for believing
that there is any kind oftranscendent reality? Right,
like, I think that focusing onwhat we do raises that question,
(43:17):
in a sort of much more concreteway than just kind of asking it
in the first place. And so Ithink that, you know, some of
the traditional kind ofphilosophical questions that
come up philosophy of religion,like grow really naturally out
of a substantive discussion ofspirituality in a way that I
hadn't expected. Right. So, youknow, in this course, we
(43:37):
certainly won't talk aboutarguments for the existence of
God in the same way into thesame degree and the same depth
that we would in a traditionalphilosophy of religion course.
But I do expect that at leastsome students will be interested
in those in a way that theywouldn't have been otherwise,
after having, you know, thoughtabout, you know, thought about
spirituality. So I don't know. Imean, I think, I think that goes
for other traditional questionsof religious diversity, you
(44:00):
know, problems of evil, problemsof religious knowledge and so
on. I think that those kinds ofquestions, maybe will have more
force, right, for students atthe end of a class on the
philosophy of spirituality. So Idon't know, we'll see if that's
right. But that's that's kind ofwhat I'm the way that I've been
thinking about it now.
Chip Gruen (44:21):
So, you know, sort of as we get towards conclusion
here, one of the questions thatI mean, sort of guides my work
at the Institute and is thecentral question of
ReligionWise, is thinking aboutenhancing the conversation of
religion in public life, right.
That is one of my premises thatwe don't generally do a very
(44:44):
good job of talking aboutreligious belief and practice,
particularly as it it getsbeyond our own although I would
say that we don't do a very goodjob of talking about that
either. But if we were to movebeyond the academy, right? So
you in the rarefied air of yourown scholarship and talking to
your groups of students, youknow, you deal with these
(45:06):
questions. Do you feel like ifwe could somehow wave a wand,
right, and change the ways thatcategories are understood at the
public policy level, or thegovernmental level, or just in
the public conversation aboutreligion and spirituality? If we
could reframe that conversationalong these lines? I mean, A,
(45:28):
would that be a good thing? AndB, you know, what, what might
that gain for us if we'relooking for a more sophisticated
conversation of belief andpractice in our world?
Tad Robinson (45:41):
Yeah, that seems like a really hard question. So,
I mean, just a couple thoughts.
I mean, on the one hand, Itotally agree that public
discourse about religion in theUnited States is, is poor. It's
really not done very well. And,you know, one of the things that
I sort of think sometimes it'slike, if an alien came down and
only watched kind of, like,popular media, and that was
(46:02):
everything they learned aboutreligion, they would assume that
pretty much like they're in theUnited States, there are, you
know, evangelical Christians,and they're Roman Catholics. And
that's, that's, that coverseverybody. Right. Like, and
there's sort of the other maybe,right. But I think, you know,
that's certainly not the case.
Right, in the in the interestsof people in those groups
themselves are not unified inany case. So yeah, I mean, I, I
(46:25):
totally agree that discourse isnot well done. You know, is
spirituality, a term that mightbe useful? I don't know. Because
I think that that term isalready so broad. You know, one
of the there's a really greatbook on on the sort of history
of the term spirituality, byLucy Bregman, it's called "The
(46:47):
Ecology of Spirituality." Itcame out in 2014, I think, and,
you know, one of the things shedocuments in there, it's like,
as of the, you know, early2000s, she kind of went back and
tried to find, like, how thisterm has been used since the
80s. And she identifies, youknow, 92 different versions of
this term, at work in sort ofhealthcare discourses, right, in
(47:08):
business discourses, inreligious discourses, and
recreation discourse. I mean,it's, it's, it's, it's a term
that gets used in lots ofdifferent ways. So it's, that's
a long way of saying, like, I'mnot sure that that's the term
that's going to improve publicdiscourse, or make it clear, you
know, with the addition of theterm, make, you know, make
(47:31):
things better, maybe, right. Imean, I actually think I think
"none" is pretty good. I mean, Iwould have never said that,
like, the first time I read theword "none" I thought that was
kind of a ridiculous way tocategorize things. But, you
know, having, you know, readsome of the sociological work
trying to capture that term, Idon't know, I've kind of come
around to thinking like, youknow, it does capture something
(47:53):
important that I think, youknow, might improve discourse,
you know, in what kinds of waysI mean, you know, I think one of
the one of the problems is thekind of homogenation in the
sense that, like, when we put acategory on a group, right, then
we can kind of talk about thatgroup as if they were the same
with respect to politics, or thesame with respect to, you know,
(48:16):
other other categories we mightbe interested in. And so, I
mean, having having morecategories, and being able to
split things up, maybe ishelpful to speak to the
diversity of religious life inthe United States and elsewhere.
But, yeah, I don't know. I mean,it's, it's a hard question. I
don't know. That's a couple ofthoughts.
Chip Gruen (48:35):
Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, I see, particularly
because this is sort of some ofthe most public of discourse
about religion happens in, inpolitical and policy circles.
And, and it, it looks like thereis a recognition that the way
that we do it isn't good, butthe answers aren't good, either.
(48:56):
I mean, going back 20 or 30years, you see people replacing
the term religion withfaith-based, right, which is,
you know, in all kinds of waysproblematic about about, you
know, being being built bypeople who are coming usually
from Protestant Christiancircles and have a particular
idea about what that means. Andso it's, you know, people trying
to be more inclusive using thatterm. You know, it's just just
(49:20):
always been a little bitlaughable. So I think maybe if
there's a silver lining, there'sa recognition that we don't do
this well, right. And maybethere's a desire to, to do it
better. So I want to end up witha question I often end up with,
which is, you know, what am Imissing here? Right, like, I
(49:42):
have my particular perspective,I live in my own skin and see
the world from my from mytraining and in my own
experiences. What am I missingabout philosophy, religion,
spirituality that would really,you know, help our listeners
understand what you're afterwhere you're going with, with
(50:05):
the moves that you're making?
Tad Robinson (50:06):
Yeah, I mean, you know what one thing that I would
just add, you know, at the endthat I didn't get a chance to
say earlier, right, it was thesort of thinking about some of
the some of the things thatbecome highlighted or come to
the fore when you sort of thinkabout spirituality as opposed to
religion. And one of the thingsthat I was really surprised by
was the sort of focus on desire,right? So like, desire is
(50:33):
something that philosophers havehad a ton to, say of, to say
about over the years. And it'ssomething that, you know, people
who engage in spiritualexercise, have a ton to say
about too, but I haven't seenthose two literature's kind of
come together at all right? So,you know, when you think about,
you know, Buddhist practices,right, one of the, you know,
(50:55):
it's not just Buddhistpractices, but, you know,
practices based on theUpanishads and so on. Right, you
see this concern aboutattachment? Right? And, and so I
think that there's a sort ofdeep cross cultural focus on the
problems of desire, right, andovercoming it or taming it, or
(51:16):
getting rid of it. That I thinkI just haven't seen a lot of, of
connection to the philosophicalliterature. I mean, this is an
old issue, right? I mean, Platois really, really concerned
about desire, for example,right? And so are philosophers
up through the ages. So, youknow, I think that that's one
one place that I was reallysurprised to discover a real gap
(51:40):
between sort of, we might think,sort of spiritual literatures,
and sort of philosophicalliteratures that I think there's
a fruitful opportunity to bringtogether so that's one thing
that I kind of would add on toto our at the end of our
conversation.
Chip Gruen (51:55):
All right, well, Tad Robinson, thank you so much for
coming on ReligionWise. Asalways, it's been super fun.
Tad Robinson (52:01):
Yeah, thanks for having me. It's great to be
here.
Chip Gruen (52:04):
This has been ReligionWise, a podcast produced
by the Institute for Religiousand Cultural Understanding of
Muhlenberg College. ReligionWiseis produced and directed by
Christine Flicker. For moreinformation about additional
programming, or to make aninquiry about a speaking
engagement, please visit ourwebsite at
religionandculture.com. Thereyou'll find our contact
(52:25):
information, links to otherprogramming and have the
opportunity to support the workof the Institute. Please
subscribe to ReligionWisewherever you get your podcasts.
We look forward to seeing younext time.
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