This essay examines a contemporary religious phenomenon that has emerged from Christian traditions and communities: the spirituality of post-Christian disciples of Jesus. The itinerary of the study includes three stages. First, the essay develops a working anthropological definition of the term "spirituality," since this term designates the primary object of study. This essay, however, proceeds on the basis of a concept of spirituality in dialectical relationship with the phenomenon of religion, not sharply distinguishing the two phenomena from one another. The second stage of this study examines historical and contextual features that specify more precisely several major factors from which the spirituality of post-Christian disciples of Jesus has emerged: rejection of Christian dogmatism, orthodoxies, and fundamentalisms; rejection of dogmatic and fundamentalist forms of science and atheism; as well as experiences of betrayal, on the one hand, by Christian communities and traditions and, on the other hand, by secular humanism and scientific culture as well. Finally, in the third stage, this essay offers a brief constructive characterization or vision of the spirituality of post-Christian disciples of Jesus, those who reject the dogmatism of the various Christian orthodoxies and fundamentalisms, but continue to find meaning and direction in the rich traditions of and about Jesus of Nazareth. This essay identifies specific epistemological, axiological, moral, and ontological features in the larger vision of post-Christian disciples of Jesus.
