The "Ohm" Heard 'Round the World: Popular Media Coverage of the 1987 Harmonic Convergence and the Discursive Possibility of "Spiritual, but Not Religious" Identity

This presentation argues that the 1987 Harmonic Convergence—the first globally synchronized meditation event—played a pivotal but under‑recognized role in creating the conditions that enabled the rise of the “spiritual, but not religious” (SBNR) identity. Through an analysis of media saturation across newspapers, syndicated comics, and late‑night television, I show how ambivalent coverage—mixing fascination, irony, and critique—performed essential work of discursive normalization. Drawing on Foucault’s “field of the sayable”, I demonstrate how ubiquity generated familiarity, which generated intelligibility, and ultimately allowed SBNR to emerge as a socially intelligible identity. Constant coverage, in other words, ensured that the ideas and practices embodied in the Convergence—and later, SBNR identity—would become part what Stalnaker refers to as “the common ground”.  By tracing how public talk circulated across media, this paper reframes the Convergence not as a failed New Age prophecy, but as an essential inflection point in understanding the exponential rise in SBNR identities.