In the contemporary world there is a trend to restore some religious world view against the dominant secularist view. Three aspects can be observed: (1) a return to traditional religions, (2) the rise of spirituality, and (3) increase of religiosity within the modern institutional sphere. In this paper the main attention is paid to (2) the rise of spirituality. The author examines the historical process through which the new spirituality, mainly in economically advanced countries, has emerged and spread. The author proposes to see the phenomena of the rise of spirituality as related to skepticism against the faith in salvation. In advanced countries, a contemporary transformation of world view is seen as "from religion to spirituality." But it may be more appropriate to call the transformation "from salvation to spirituality." There is continuity between "new spirituality," which develops outside the traditional religions, and emphasis on spirituality which develops within the traditional religions. In order to understand the relationship between religion and spirituality, provisional definitions of religion and spirituality are proposed. Although there is tension between religion and new spirituality, from another viewpoint religion and new spirituality is complementary. The understanding of the complementarity of religion and new spirituality proposed here reflects the East Asian perspective of religious history with which the author is familiar.
