Theoretical correlations between world-view, civil religion, institutional religion and informal spiritualities Helena Helve (Helsinki) and Michael Pye (Marburg) This article was first published in Temenos - Nordic Journal of Comparative Religion 37-38 (2001-2001), 87- 106; see:<https://journal.fi/temenos/article/view/4834>. It is re-issued here with minor editorial corrections, 1 but without any change to the substance. It may be cited either from Temenos or from this new pdf, but the source should be indicated, as the page numbers may vary. 1. Introduction This joint paper 2 proposes a theoretical correlation between "world-view", "civil religion", "institutional religion" and "informal spiritualities" which provides an analytical framework for studies in the religious situation of contemporary Europe. We use "world-view" as a conceptual framework that ties together various empirical observations as well as previous studies and literature dealing with "civil religion". The concept of world-view helps us to understand the structure of "religion" or "religiosity" in contemporary advanced industrial, and in some respects post-industrial societies. It also helps us to understand the phenomenon which we are quite happy to call civil religion in its complex relations with institutional and informal forms of religion. Our presentation contains various empirical examples which reflect examples of civil religion within the general framework of world-view. 3 However these are presented in some brevity in order not to obscure the theoretical relations. Civil religion is in some respects not institutionalised. For example, the widespread traditional value of "readiness to die for one's country" is not the possession of any one institution. However, in other respects civil religion is strongly institutionalised, as for example in the Pantheon in Paris, or closely related to traditionally explicit institutionalised religions, as for example, in the monuments of national significance in Westminster Abbey, London. In either of these cases the phenomenon of civil religion is not necessarily perceived in the common mind as "religion". Civil religion, though more or less tenuously related to specific churches, sometimes seems to be stronger than the various churches. It therefore sets an implicit question-mark against the precise contemporary status of major religious institutions or denominations. In recent decades these have only been able to mount a less than universal claim in most modern societies. Thus, the relations between civil religion and nationally prominent churches are quite complex. On the other hand, it is relatively easy to distinguish civil religion from the newer religious movements of more or less private, individual interest. These latter, by contrast, operate within the much broader field now frequently referred to as "spirituality," which is quite widespread among persons who are neither religious in an institutional sense nor firmly rationalistic or atheistic in their beliefs. Since there are many alternative forms of "spirituality" we prefer to use the plural form "spiritualities", and since such spiritualities have a loose and varied relation to institutionalized religions we refer to them in general as "informal spiritualities". There is an unresolved question about the relation between this broad field of "new spiritualities" and civil religion. We believe that it is also necessary to address this question in order to achieve greater theoretical coherence in respect to the current religious situation of modern societies. More widely, the concept of world-view 1 Note in particular the correct spelling of “correlations” in the title, which in case of citation would be preferred. 2 This paper was originally conceived in dialogue form and was presented as such in various contexts. However, the agreements and the interweaving of the observations, references, and so on, made it impossible to maintain the differentiation between separate contributions. It is therefore now presented as a joint paper. 3 A particular stimulus was given by observations of the "civil religion" demonstrated on Independence Day in Finland on December 6 th 2000 observed from various points of view by each author.