CFP: Philosophical Perspectives on Religious Nones, Dones, and the Spiritual but Not Religious

The landscape of religion and spirituality is undergoing profound transformation. Across many societies, increasing numbers of individuals identify as “spiritual but not religious” (SBNR), while others describe themselves as “religious dones”—those who have disengaged from organised religious institutions yet retain religious, spiritual, or thinner theological commitments. Between these categories lie a range of “in-betweeners”: individuals who resist traditional labels and inhabit fluid spaces between belief and unbelief, religion and secularity, affiliation and disaffiliation.

These concepts and religious development have enjoyed significant attention in sociology, psychology of religion, and anthropology. Yet, they remain underexplored in philosophy of religion, despite raising significant philosophical questions concerning religious identity, spiritual practice, belief, transcendence, meaning, community, authority, authenticity, and the future of religion itself. This special issue seeks to explore the conceptual, epistemological, metaphysical, and phenomenological dimensions of these emerging forms of religiosity and spirituality.

We welcome submissions that explore the topics below or adjacent issues:

• How can the diverse worldviews of the religious nones and their relationship to atheism, agnosticism, and spirituality be conceptualized and rationally reconstructed?
• Given the eclectic nature of some positions within “spiritual but not religious”, how do they relate to religious fictionalism and pragmatism?
• Can transcendence be meaningful without a defined concept of God?
• How should the spiritual but not religious, and the religiously unaffiliated more broadly, respond to the problem of evil and suffering?
• How should claims of spiritual insight be evaluated when detached from established traditions?
• Does the decline of institutional religion require new models of religious epistemology?
• How should seekers navigate questions of truth, doubt, and commitment outside established religious communities?
• How should philosophers understand hybrid identities that combine elements of religion, spirituality, secularity, and skepticism?
• Are religious nones at a disadvantage in grounding meaning and purpose?
• Does spirituality without doctrine provide sufficient moral or existential guidance?

To submit, please visithttps://publicera.kb.se/aejpr/about/submissions. Name the file “Special Issue SBNR”.