The popular term “spiritual but not religious” only goes so far in describing an event like this. I think Burning Man shows us the enduring importance of ritual as a vehicle through which humans connect with one another and as well as with a mysterious “more,” while also showing us how these expressions are increasingly displaced outside the bounds of the dominant Western cultural concepts of “religion.”
Lee Gilmore
Lee Gilmore is a lecturer in Religious Studies and Anthropology at California State University, Northridge. She is coeditor of After-Burn: Reflections on the Burning Man Festival.
