Sacred Pregnancy in the Age of the "nones"

Abstract

Through the creation of Sacred Living retreats, books and online community, Anni Daulter has tapped into an increasingly widespread desire to rearticulate pregnancy and childbirth as rites of passage requiring community support, ritual, and spiritual meaning. In a pendulum swing away from the increased medicalization of childbirth in the United States, new spiritual birth movements such as the Sacred Living Movement seek to overcome the individualization and isolation of the transition into motherhood through pregnancy and childbirth. Responding to Kathryn Lofton's recent call to see parenthood as religious expression, this article positions Sacred Living in the context of the increased disaffiliation of religious individuals in the United States and describes the ways in which movements such as these attempt to resacralize rites of passage in modern life and, in so doing, demonstrate a new paradigm of spiritual and religious community for the age of the religious "nones".