These include the scientisation...

These include the scientisation, the psychologising, the philosophisation, the theologising and the ecologising of the spiritual, in other words a dynamic that requires the spiritual to be interpreted by each discipline, to be given a language from each discipline. It is science of course that poses the greatest danger, and hence my article “Against Scientific Magisterial Imperialism” mentioned above.

However the psychologising of the spiritual is just as big an obstacle to recovering a genuinely spiritual language and a genuinely spiritual sense of self, indeed the ‘self’ is almost entirely understood today in psychological terms.

(It was not always so.) Not that science and psychology do not have a great deal to contribute to the new spiritualities, far from it, and not that imperialisms of one kind or another are not being questioned: the logical positivism of the last century is for example less of an influence today. But the spiritual needs to assert its own language again, independent of the past, and independent of science and psychology, and even for that matter, philosophy.

Possibly the simplest way to do this is to make sure that the postsecular impulse does not draw on one of the seven contexts alone, but cross-references each one of them. Art - by which I mean all the creative fields, including poetry - is a great corrective to science, and the creative fields, where they have explored the spiritual impulse in the 20th century, yield many insights.

For example the series of paintings by Mark Rothko, the American Abstract Expressionist, which were hung for many years in the ‘Rothko room’ at the Tate Gallery in London, point to a non-verbal language of the spiritual which invoked spiritual insights for generations of gallery visitors. With these points in mind I have set up a Centre for Postsecular Studies at London Metropolitan University.

Its focus will be to support research, including Doctoral studies, from a range of disciplines in such a way as to foster an open enquiry into the spiritual. It is fitting that a University should be the setting for this.

In the Middle Ages Universities supported the intellectual efforts of religious Scholasticism, in the Modern period Universities defended the secular freedom to question authority, and in a postsecular spirit, perhaps the University setting can restore the creativity and vigour of intellect to spiritual questions.