"A Cult of Cookie Bakers": The Spiritual Qualities of Youth Social Justice Organization Free the Children. (September 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Funnell-Kononuk, Emma; Mosurinjohn, Sharday
• Other Names: Proeschel Claude guest-editor.; Teinturier Sara guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Studies in religion. Volume 48:Number 3(2019:Sep.)
• Page Start: 462
• Page End: 482
• Publication Date: 2019-09
• Subjects: Free the Children -- new secular spiritual movement -- contemporary spirituality -- youth spiritual development -- ritual; Free the Children -- nouveaux mouvements séculiers -- spiritualités contemporaines -- développement spirituel des jeunes -- rituel; Religion -- Periodicals; Religions -- Periodicals; 200.5
• DOI: 10.1177/0008429819830959
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0008-4298

Abstract

This article analyzes the growing youth social justice initiative Free the Children/ME to WE as a kind of "spiritual movement" by demonstrating how the discourses utilized by participants and authorities resemble both the discourse of self-spirituality, as found among actual millennials, and the discourse of youth spirituality found in the developmental sciences literature. Building on previous research in which we characterized this family of organizations as a "new secular spiritual movement, " (Mosurinjohn and Funnell-Kononuk, 2017). we situate the phenomenological experience of its distinctive "WE spirituality" in the landscape of contemporary Western spirituality. Following on arguments that the politics of self-spirituality are more social change-oriented than previously acknowledged, we illuminate the logics of a spiritual movement that develops the "me" of the individual self into a part of the "we" of an imagined global community, by making spirituality coextensive with social civic engagement.