Religion and Therapeutic Culture: Beyond the Competition Narrative

• In Event: Sociology of Religion Section Open Call Paper Session

Abstract

Scholarship on religion and modern society often argues that therapeutic culture—an understanding of modern selfhood that emphasizes intentional work on the self to resolve problems and promote moral betterment—provides functional alternatives to religion and undermines shared moral standards. Therapeutic culture is thus typically understood as a competitor to organized religion that perhaps even helps explain religion’s decline. In this paper, we critique this competition narrative, explaining that therapeutic culture has notable religious dimensions and that religious actors rely on therapeutic meanings to enact religious selfhood in contested cultural settings. Using data from our separate studies of community organizing and premarital counseling, we show that therapeutic culture provides languages, symbols, and practices that allow religious organizations to articulate their principles and commitments in ostensibly secular contexts, and religious individuals to enact religious identities in ways that evade the cultural polarization that otherwise often impedes religious-secular cooperation. We argue that the field’s acceptance of the competition narrative results from an overemphasis on religious behavior that occurs in formal and institutional contexts at the expense of lived, practical, and spiritual action.

Authors

• Jack Delehanty, Clark University

• Courtney Ann Irby, Illinois Wesleyan University