The Growth of Alternative Therapy: A Valid Argument against the Secularisation Thesis?

Abstract

The fact that alternative therapy has experienced vast growth during the last 30 years in most of the West is used by both Paul Heelas and Linda Woodhead as an argument against the secularisation theory. The objective of this article is to examine whether such an argument can be seen as being valid. In order to do this, four preconditions are formulated whose fulfilment I consider to be necessary if the above-mentioned arguments against the secularisation theory are to be accepted. The four preconditions are discussed; they are as follows: 1) alternative therapy is of significant magnitude; 2) the alternative therapists themselves consider the practice to be spiritual; 3) the clients seeing such ‘spiritual’ therapists have a spiritually informed motive to do so; 4) ‘spirituality’ as understood both by practitioners and by clients has ‘religious’ connotations.

Notes

1. This article was published in Swedish translation; here the author has used the original English text, but page references relate to the published text in Swedish.

2. The purpose of this article is to discuss the views of Woodhead and Paul Heelas on alternative therapy and its presumably implicit spirituality. Woodhead and Heelas both have their own interpretations of such concepts as ‘secularisation’ and ‘public sphere’, two highly debated notions, as background for their arguments. Since these notions are not my focus, I do not discuss them here but take Woodhead’s and Heelas’s views as given.

3. The results of the Kendal project constitute the basis for Heelas et al.’s book The Spiritual Revolution.

4. In this article I use the term ‘alternative therapy’ rather than ‘complementary and alternative therapy (CAM)’.

5. In the years 1987, 1994, 2000, 2005, and 2010, samples of between 5,000 and 15,000 Danes answered a questionnaire from Sundheds- og sylighedsundersøgelserne or SUSY (the ‘Health and Illness’ study). One of the questions was: have you ever been treated by therapists outside the general health system? Listed therapies were reflexology, acupuncture, healing and/or clairvoyance, homeopathy, nutritional therapy, massage, osteopathy and other manipulative therapies, cranio-sacral therapy, biopathy, kinesiology, and others such as visualisation, heilpraktik, and Bach flower therapy. The percentage using alternative therapy in the year of the investigation has risen from 10% in 1987 to 26% in 2010.

6. The question of the degree to which this kind of provision is also available in the state-funded healthcare system cannot be answered in regard to Denmark and Heelas (“Nursing”) says the same with regard to the UK.

7. Questions measuring this are to a large extent taken from the European Values Survey (see http://www.europeanvaluesstudy.eu/).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lars Ahlin

Lars Ahlin is Associate Professor in Sociology of Religion. He has written two books about the New Age from a sociological perspective and one about alternative therapy in Denmark. CORRESPONDENCE: Jens Chr. Skous Vej 3 Bygning 1453, Lokale 527, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark.