Introduction: From Kaleidoscopes to Phantasmagoria: The Shifting Nature(s) of Religion and Spirituality in the Twenty-First Century Available to Purchase

In the twenty-first century, amid a global world defined by a shared pandemic and an increasing reliance on technological automation, what is meant by religion and spirituality? Within Western discourses, religion and spirituality are often declared universal conditions in the same breath as being commonly claimed as relative and exclusive states. We see religion and spirituality invoked both as the source for virtuous actions, compassionate responses, and responsible stewardship, and as the rationale for terroristic actions and the justification for apocalyptic war and retaliation. Religion and spirituality force us to encounter questions of self-awareness, the limits of identity, and restrictions of nationhood; both terms are claimed as the site for embedding ethics while simultaneously producing the very conditions to other by establishing arbitrary boundaries between good and evil, right and wrong, friend and enemy. Religion and spirituality motivate movement, legitimating projects of displacement and colonial imposition yet offering the displanted...