Modern society can measure inequality, power and behaviour in extraordinary detail, but struggles to explain despair, loneliness, hope and the human need for meaning.

We live in a culture that has lost its spirit. We know how to measure behaviour, track trends, and analyse systems, yet we no longer know what it means to be human.

Modern western culture primarily understands human beings in material terms. It speaks endlessly of identity and power but neglects the question of meaning.

The discipline that seeks to understand modern society is sociology. Yet it has moved a long way from the creative tension embedded in its own foundations between our material environment and the spirit that animates human life. To recover this neglected tension, I propose a new framework: Spiritual Sociology, which understands human beings as both material and spiritual beings.

In modern sociology, the language of the spirit has been almost entirely replaced by the language of systems. Sociologists can describe inequality in exquisite detail, yet cannot explain despair. They can trace networks of capital and power, yet cannot account for hope, forgiveness or transformation.

Spiritual Sociology begins with questions that contemporary sociology struggles to answer. Why does mental health continue to decline despite extraordinary advances in wealth, education and technology? Why has loneliness become endemic in affluent societies? Why does political polarisation continue to deepen? These questions cannot be understood solely in terms of economic disparity, identity........

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