CONNECTED. Assessing Connectedness as a Spiritual Experience. - Jasmine Hieronymi-Suhner

Summary:

Connectedness is the key concept of this proposed research project. It addresses the issue of arising new (digital) spaces and new ways of articulating and communicating spiritual experiences (SBNR) in today’s globally linked society. The overall objective is to generate knowledge about specifically one of the most central dimensions of both religions and spirituality: connectedness (King et al. 2014, Yaden et al. 2021, Purdy et al. 2005, Bucher 2022).

Background and significance

The project derives its relevance from several current societal and technological dynamics:

- The increasing diverse and globalized religious and spiritual (R/S) landscape leads to a growing number of “spiritual but not religious” people (SBNR) that needs to be done research on, e.g. for societal and educational reasons.

- The evolving post-digital society creates new spaces, for people to gather and communicate, thus creating new communities online (“digital tribes”).

- Both of these trends lead to new power dynamics and authorities in the (R/S) landscape, as well as new ways of speaking of the divine, which we still know little about. - There are recent calls for methodological innovation in the field of spirituality studies, especially when it comes to digital humanities.

The proposed project is in response to these needs, ducing results primarily within spirituality research, but that’s not all: previous studies have identified different types of connectedness (nature/self/social/spiritual) as mutually reinforcing and as key predictors of psychological well-being and flourishing (Saeri et al. 2018, Seligman 2012). Thus, the results should also provide insights into how to foster connectedness in terms of well-being and flourishing life.

Methods used and leading questions

The project shall explore and analyze connectedness as a spiritual experience both in theoretical debate and in ‘lived spirituality’. For this purpose, I shall first conduct a comprehensive literature review of existing research on the understanding/definitions/dimensions/related concepts of connectedness as a spiritual experience. Second, the project shall present an interdisciplinary approach combining qualitative analysis with methods of distributional semantics through a semantic and sentiment analysis of social media datasets with regard to terms related to ‘connectedness’. The synthesis of both datasets will be used to further develop existing scales of connectedness. Leading questions are: How are experiences of connectedness interpreted and articulated? What are the markers of and barriers to experiencing connectedness in a positive way? How do the hallmarks of experiencing connectedness compare to psychological research on well-being?

Output and Impact

I anticipate a theoretical and an empirical dataset regarding connectedness as a spiritual concept, plus one scientific publication on the synthesis of these datasets, published in either a theological or psychological journal. 3 For the future of peaceful coexistence, well-founded insights into ‘lived R/S’, and into the dynamic relation between R/S and digital media and their potential for promoting a feeling of connectedness are crucial, e.g. when it comes to further developing interreligious/intercultural education. In light of societal problems such as loneliness and isolation, identifying features that may contribute to a feeling of connectedness seems vital to support well-being and flourishing life.