ABSTRACT
Initial impressions and fluidity in belief and practice suggest complexity close to chaos. It is impossible to grasp this phenomenon immediately and adequately as a coherent, distinctive spirituality. Reality is a dynamic stream of events that is in a state of perpetual flux. Sociocultural disciplines are therefore endowed with eternal youth because culture in its endless progressions invariably leads these disciplines to novel problematics. From this, it can be inferred that these spiritual actors as cultural innovators require exactly that sociologists of religion trying to understand them have to formulate new problematics. The minimal conclusion to be drawn from all of this is that the sociological investigation of new religions and spiritualities in contemporary societies must be protected from assumptions about confinement to the public sphere and triviality implied in hard line secularisation theories. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
