Routledge Selling Spirituality: The Silent Takeover of Religion

Selling Spirituality offers a critical analysis of the rise of spirituality as a powerful commodity in the global marketplace. It shows how spirituality is big business, examining how spiritual discourses, practices, and institutions have been reshaped by neoliberal forces. This expanded second edition provides significant updates to the book in light of developments from the previous decades, particularly the consolidation of neoliberalism through digital technologies, emerging AI and platform capitalism. Building on the original analysis of the privatisation of religion and the privatisation of welfare, the authors introduce a third privatisation: the outsourcing of attention, affect, and mental resilience to spiritualised techniques of self-regulation amid conditions of precarity, algorithmic governance, and informational overload. Four new chapters examine neoliberalism as a quasi-religious orthodoxy; the commodification of Christian prayer and interiority; mindfulness as a technology of attention within the attention economy; and the dangers of individualised green spirituality in responding to climate crisis. Substantially revised chapters address psychology, Asian philosophies, and spiritual consumer industries. Across these contexts, the book argues that contemporary spirituality increasingly manages distress and anxiety while obscuring the structural sources of social and mental suffering. This insightful book will be of great interest to students and scholars in religious studies, philosophy, cultural studies, sociology, political theory, and environmental humanities. It will also be of interest to readers concerned with neoliberalism, mental health, digital capitalism, mindfulness, and the contemporary politics of wellbeing.