religion with ‘non-religious spirituality’, and draws the conclusion that

they are both the same kind of thing:

Implicit religion appears to be indistinguishable from the kind of

non-religious spirituality that is becoming increasingly widespread

in our society. (Implicit Religion 6.3: 158)

He borrows the idea of spirituality which is non-religious from James

Fuller, who contrasts it with ‘activities which may function like a religion

but lack a distinctively spiritual quality’ (p. 152). The homologisation

of spirituality with implicit religion appears to be widespread, so

much so that a succession of articles recently appearing in this journal

use the terms interchangeably. There is, of course, an obvious relationship

between religion itself—both explicit and implicit—and spirituality,

just as there is between explicit and implicit religion; but they are not

the same relationship. ‘Spirituality’ and ‘implicit religion’ denote two

distinct ways of being related to explicit religiosity, which may overlap

but should not be taken as congruent.