Rainn Wilson’s “Soul Boom” as a Metamodern New Religious Movement

For the better part of two decades, actor and comedian Rainn Wilson has publicly pursued his passion for community-based spiritual inquiry. His recent book, Soul Boom: Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution (2023), promotes secular-spiritual engagement with literally “anything concerning the divine”—including spiritual wisdom available through popular culture products such as television’s StarTrek and Kung Fu—as long as it contributes to the individual and social renewal that, in his view, is critical to keeping humanity from its own destruction. Especially palatable to those who affiliate as Spiritual but not Religious or “Nones,” Wilson’s sincere yet ironic, disarmingly quirky presentation of universalist grand narratives aims to engage our contemporary, mediatized moment. It will be read here through the lens of metamodern theory (per Vermeulen and van den Akker) and understood as an example of a trend of “metamodernization" that characterizes some contemporary spiritual figures.