What are the barriers to pursuing our spiritual yearnings in a disenchanted age? 

Dr. Galen Watts addresses this question in this final presentation from our international symposium held at McGill University in November 2024.

Galen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Legal Studies at the University of Waterloo. His research focuses on cultural and institutional change in liberal democracies, with particular attention to religion, morality, work, and politics. He is the author of The Spiritual Turn: The Religion of the Heart and the Making of Romantic Liberal Modernity (Oxford University Press, 2022), which explores the shift from "religion" to "spirituality" and its social and political implications in the West. Currently, his work investigates the cultural dimensions of the "diploma divide," analyzing how symbolic boundaries and cultural practices shape distinctions between urban university-educated professionals and rural nonuniversity-educated workers in Canada and the U.S. Galen has published extensively in leading academic journals, including American Journal of Cultural Sociology, Sociology of Religion, Civic Sociology, European Journal of Social Theory, and The Sociological Review. He also writes for public audiences, bridging academic insights with broader cultural conversations.

In his talk, Galen addresses the following themes:

1. Why cosmic connection may be harder to achieve today
2. The impact of cultural and institutional change on spiritual yearning
3. The decline of the humanities and the loss of deep formative experiences
4. The "secular sacred canopy" and its barriers to transcendence
5. The paradox of ethical progress alongside increasing spiritual disorientation
6. Can modernity be reconciled with cosmic connection?

To learn more about Dr. Watts, you can find him at:

Website: https://www.galenwatts.com/

Linked: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/galen-watts-a8877a212

Book: The Spiritual Turn Buy here (https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-spiritual-turn-9780192859839?q=galen%20watts&lang=en&cc=gb)

This episode is sponsored by:
John Templeton Foundation (https://www.templeton.org/)
Templeton Religion Trust (https://templetonreligiontrust.org/)

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