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Matthew Harris, Assistant Professor of Religions in the Americas

With Templeton support, Professor Matthew Harris co-leads a project bringing together scholars to define a tradition that runs from astrology to Afrofuturism.

What is metaphysical spirituality? Definitions range from occultism (secret knowledge of or use of the supernatural) to mysticism (belief that direct knowledge of ultimate reality is possible through subjective experience).

Matthew Harris, Assistant Professor of Religions in the Americas at the University of Chicago Divinity School, answered with a phrase from Catherine Albanese, PhD’72, J. F. Rowny Distinguished Professor Emerita in Comparative Religions at the University of California, Santa Barbara: metaphysical spirituality “cuts a wide swath.”

“It refers to treatises on the powers of positive thinking to overcome life’s obstacles; the practices of reading the stars, reading the cards, and reading the body as a method of healing and guidance; the various ancient wisdoms revived as an antidote to the perils of modern living; and a variety of other popular experiments to convert unseen power to practical ends,” he continued.

Its popularity has grown alongside the number of people identifying as nonreligious, but its lineage and tradition have yet to be fully distinguished from manifestations cloaked in major world religions, including Christianity and Islam.

“Metaphysical Spirituality and the Future of Religion: From the Margins to the Mainstream” seeks to further define this tradition for both the academic field of religious studies and the public. The project, co-led by Harris and Joseph Blankholm, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at UC Santa Barbara, received a $1.5 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation to conduct workshops, host public events, and produce two monographs as well as an edited volume.

“One of the aims of the grant is to establish a more cohesive field of study,” Harris said.

“What we call metaphysical spirituality has been studied under a variety of labels, all of which have proven valuable. But those terms also index specific methodological approaches and result in siloed disciplinary conversations. The grant enables us to facilitate overdue exchanges. For example, Professor Blankholm and I recently convened two workshops with scholars working on subjects that we consider as falling under the banner of metaphysical spirituality who would not normally be in conversation with one another.”

Workshops in Santa Barbara and Chicago

The first workshop took place in Santa Barbara in February 2026 and the second in Chicago in September. They included scholars from the United States and around the world who work on materials in Mexico, Canada, the Philippines, the Caribbean, and the United States, and whose research spans disciplines including Western esotericism, anthropology, African American religion, American religion, art history, Asian languages and cultures, and queer studies.

Scholars outside Swift Hall during the project’s September 2026 workshop in Chicago.

“Our project is helping scholars and the public see this bigger picture,” Blankholm said. “How do all the different kinds of metaphysical spirituality fit together today? What’s the history they share? We’re trying to answer these questions.”

The resulting edited volume will introduce the “wide swath” of metaphysical spirituality through key terms shared across movements, each with its own inflection, including “attunement,” “energy,” “medium,” “shaman,” “vibration,” and others.

Meghan Doyle, a PhD student in the Divinity School and in the Department of Art History, is writing a chapter of the volume that considers the term “rite.” She will approach the concept and the word through an attempted exorcism of the Pentagon during a protest march in October 1967; the rite was performed as an act of dissent against the United States’ participation in the Vietnam War.

The workshops have contributed to shaping how Doyle thinks about ritual in terms of success as well as sincerity.

“Being in the room with this group of scholars has been and is an incredible honor,” Doyle said. “My biggest takeaway is the utter care with which these scholars approach their chosen topics of study, always with a view to political and ethical implications in today’s climate, and the way they give voice not just to human experience but to individual humans’ experiences.”

A Religious History of Sun Ra

For Professor Harris, the funds from the Templeton Foundation are also supporting the completion of his first monograph, a distillation of the research that led him to begin investigating the world of metaphysical spirituality.

From 1946 to 1961, the jazz musician Sun Ra lived on Chicago’s South Side, and during those years he became deeply immersed in metaphysical religion. Researching that chapter of Sun Ra’s life was Harris’s pathway to the field.

“I am writing a religious history of Sun Ra, who was a major figure in the Black Arts Movement, avant-garde jazz, and one of the pioneers of the aesthetic repertoire that has come to be called Afrofuturism,” Harris said. “The book uses the musician’s archive to tell a broader story about the transformation of Black religion in the twentieth century.”

The Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center at the University of Chicago Library is home to the Alton Abraham Collection of Sun Ra. It contains manuscripts, business records, printed ephemera, artifacts, photographs, audio and video recordings, and other materials documenting Sun Ra and his collaborators, gathered by Alton Abraham, the musician’s friend and business manager.

Up Next: The Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion

Readers interested in learning more about metaphysical spirituality and its politics can find Professor Harris at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Denver. There, he will chair a roundtable, “Spirituality and Politics on the 75th Anniversary of Adorno’s ‘Theses Against Occultism,’” jointly sponsored by the Critical Theory and Discourses on Religion Unit and the Esotericism Unit. Blankholm is among the panelists. Theodor Adorno’s theses critique the politics of astrology and spiritualism, and the panel will use the anniversary as an occasion to discuss the politics of metaphysical spirituality more generally. The session meets on Saturday, November 21, at 3 p.m. in Room 206 of the Colorado Convention Center.