NTT Journal for Theology and the Study of Religion - Volume 77, Issue 3, 2023

Recent publications about religion and spirituality in the Netherlands show a growing group of “religious nones”—individuals who do not affiliate themselves with a religion or ideological group. For the “unaffiliated spirituals,” those who call themselves spiritual without being institutionally affiliated, organized religions and religious communities are considered a non-necessity to one’s spirituality. This generates questions about the role, function, and value of institutional, organized religion, and religious communities. Looking at Ernst Troeltsch’s reception of William James’s individualistic approach to religion in The Varieties of Religious Experiences, I show how Troeltsch outlines possible boundaries or prerequisites to an individualized approach to religion and spirituality, specifically on the level of religious experiences. Troeltsch argues that thought, media, and community are crucial parts of (re)productive religious experiences. Putting into question a purely individualistic and privatized approach to religion, Troeltsch offers a helpful and relevant perspective on the importance of religious communities and their role in articulating, even facilitating and regulating individual experiences. Furthermore, he refers to the potential of religious experiences to bridge the tension between individual and community.

As part of NTT JTSR’s series on Key Texts, the present article discusses the Canticle of the Creatures or Canticle of Brother Sun as a song that can change the way people perceive themselves in their natural environment. Francis of Assisi, who had turned away from ‘the world,’ had learned a different way of perceiving. Where the world perceives the environment by grasping, taking control, and solving problems, Francis had become sensitive to the way in which the environment communicates itself: as a mystery. Purified by humility, his senses testified that the environment, down to its elementary level, is praising the One who created it and guarantees its meaning and value. But rather than praising the Creator for his creatures, the hymn prays that the Creator lets Himself be praised by His creatures. This praise of the creatures is a reverberation, strengthening, and colouring of God’s blessings. The role of Francis is to lend his own voice and language to these heavenly praises as they are resounding in his environment. His message is, with words quoted from the Encyclical Laudato Si’ of Pope Francis, that our environment is not a problem to be solved, but “a joyful mystery to be contemplated with gladness and praise.”¹