Spirituality, Economics, And Education: A Dialogic Critique of "Spiritual Capital." (Report‪)‬

In 2005, the Spiritual Capital Research Program announced a $3.75 million grant "to catalyze the emergence of a productive, vital and interdisciplinary research field of spiritual capital in the social sciences, with particular attention to building connections to economics" (Spiritual Capital Research Program 2005). This particular work, commissioned by the Metanexus Institute and the John Templeton Foundation is, as we argue in the following dialogue, an exemplar of neoliberal rhetoric taking aim at the economic uses of spirituality in a globalized world. Based in a conservative think tank with ties to the American Enterprise Institute and using such neoconservative thinkers as Francis Fukuyama, this project is, we contend, a veiled example of the "conservative restoration" at work (Apple 2000; 2001; Shudak & Helfenbein, 2005). Traditionally, spirituality has functioned in three ways in everyday life. First, it has answered deep and often pressing questions concerning the meaning of human life, the suffering associated with loss and deprivation, and the fears and hopes connected with boundary situations such as birth and death. Second, it has legitimized existing power relations. Third, it has resisted those same power relations (see, for instance, Chopp 1986; Cobb 2000; Cobb 2002). The question we wish to address arises from the methodical and alarming co-opting of significant human values by the subtle rhetoric of a neoliberal/neoconservative agenda such that the resistance to hegemony historically available through spirituality is instead turned into another form of acquiescence (Cobb 2002; Lakoff 2004; McCutcheon 2005).