Religious and spiritual festivals and events

This chapter attempts a critical review and appraisal of the current state of research into religious and spiritual festivals and associated events. The literature emerges from a wide range of multidisciplinary sources, which have historically been situated in separate, traditional disciplinary silos. The chapter also investigates research into the religious origins of contemporary festivals, and questions whether and how meanings can be separately, or both, spiritual and religious. It notes the de-spiritualisation of religious festivals. Finally, the chapter assesses the future development of conceptual and theoretical approaches to religious and spiritual festivals, from empirical positioning to qualitative ethnographic perspectives (Sparkes & Smith 2013) and critical events research (Lamond & Platt 2016).