ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the emergence of the discourse of holistic spirituality in history. It argues it can be understood as both a by-product of secular modernity and as reaction to it. Since the eighteenth century, it has been proposed, consistently, that the modern world is disenchanted. Although highly diverse in its formulations, this critique of modernity has generally located the source of disenchantment in the various intellectual and social developments which emerged from the Enlightenment – notably, those premised upon the belief that universal reason and science would emancipate individuals from what Enlightenment thinkers saw in religion as superstition and backward custom. It is often argued that the West, for some time now, has been undergoing a process of secularization. No doubt, for at least half a century, churches of almost all denominations have been losing members. In recent years, a wealth of literature dedicated to the study of spirituality has emerged across the human sciences.
