There is an activity that might be termed Spiritual History; by which I mean a purported history that derives from within a particular spirituality.
And this Spiritual History will typically become regarded as "objectively true" by adherents of the spirituality: true for everybody (not just for the adherents).
So, what is a Spiritual History?
As one example; Helena Blavatsky described a vast, detailed, and complicated panorama of supposed world history, which became integral to the Theosophical Society she founded.
This includes descriptions of creation from its earliest stages; many historical "races" of proto humans (the earliest very un-like modern humans; and lost civilizations such as Lemuria, and Atlantis -- indeed; it is mostly because of Blavatsky that so many people have heard-of, and been-discussing, Atlantis over the past century-plus.
Blavatsky's Spiritual History was very influential on the emerging occult societies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries; was expanded and reshaped (and extended millennia into the future) by Rudolf Steiner into his Anthroposophy; and has since become a part of the vast and diffuse New Age movement of the past several decades.
My point is that in the past a spiritual society - or a religion - would nearly-always tend to elaborate (or as it is presented "discover") a vast, detailed ,and complex historical picture; which then forms a kind of metaphysical backdrop to the everyday practices and beliefs.
We can see something similar among the best-documented of the recent world religions, Mormonism; particularly stark in that the Book of Mormon* came before the beliefs and practices that distinguished Mormonism from mainstream Christianity had been elucidated and fixed.
An analogous process of elaborating a Spiritual History apparently applies to mainstream Christianity, in that the process of elaborating a justifying and explaining vast/ detailed/ complex historical backdrop was apparently separate from, but in this case later than, the foundational teachings**.
In other words, the Gospels (especially the Fourth, and earliest, Gospel) depict a very different - far-briefer/ less-detailed/ much-simpler "religion" from the colossal artefact that Christianity became over the following centuries - which means that mainstream Christianity also discovered/ developed a Spiritual History.
So far as I know, something similar applies to all religions - not to the same extent, but to a significant degree.
This suggests that - at least in the past, and especially until about a century ago; a detailed Spiritual History was probably both necessary-to the establishment, and sustaining, of a successful church; and was demanded-by the members of a church (e.g. to answer their natural questions regarding their religion's origins, purpose, and validity).
But that was then, this is now; and Spiritual Histories (especially the historical factuality of The Bible) have been undergoing systemic challenge, subversion, and destruction from mainstream secular "scholarship" - for at least 200 years.
And this continual challenge has its effect whatever the conclusion; because the process implicitly regards the religion as disprovable by the same secular mechanisms as other knowledge-claims.
(Most of the most-effective attacks on religion are implicit; and these are pervasive and unavoidable. Because the entirety of the systems of modern society are based upon secular - God-excluding - assumptions. This includes religions, which survive only by compliance with multiple laws and regulations of a secular type: to do with personnel and employment, "human rights", "hate speech"; buildings; taxes and exemptions and subsidies... many, many such.)
The process of evaluation of Spiritual History accepts the definitive nature of secular scholarship - so that religion always and necessarily loses - religion has pre-conceded defeat, by assumption.
Yet the "fundamentalist" approach of asserting the validity of Spiritual History does not work, either! - it just puts the History into a sealed capsule where Spiritual History cannot (therefore does not) have anything to do with the mainstream secular world of history.
Consequently, even the most fundamentalist church Christians are just as subservient to the processes and procedures of totalitarian secular society as everybody else; believing and supporting nearly-all of the main strategies of totalitarian evil - except for a symbolic handful of dissenting denials that adherents merely-say, and a handful of self-reassuring dissenting-activities that are (currently) tolerated by The System.
In other words; Spiritual History has, in the modern era, come to represent an unprotectable Achilles Heel for all religions - and the bigger, more detailed, and more complicated the History, the more points that will be attacked - both explicitly and (even more powerfully) implicitly.
Consequently Spiritual History no longer convinces many people; and those who remain "convinced" are not substantively affected by their encapsulated dissent - because they live "in" a society with which these Historical assertions are incompatible.
My conclusion is that Spiritual History needs to be abandoned as a requirement of a spiritually viable, and sufficiently-motivating religion***.
I feel that we simply cannot afford to open ourselves to the process of refutations, in a situation where we cannot ourselves deny the validity of that process.
Or, to put it differently: our belief in Alternative Histories must be made independent of the processes of Historical validation.
And this includes beliefs concerning the foundation of our church or the origins of our scripture - because these are just as vulnerable to secular assumptions and processes as are the "factual content" of the Spiritual Histories...
I mean that we cannot argue the validity of our church on the basis of History; because that historical "evidence" is itself vulnerable.
And we cannot argue the validity of the Bible, for the same reason.
My conclusion is that we need to rely for our deepest and most-motivating convictions, only upon "evidence" that is derived personally and by criteria that satisfy our-selves primarily, and for which only self-validation is necessary.
I mean, in other words, Direct Knowing - which might also be called a kind of intuition - needs to be our "bottom-line".
This also means that - by eschewing external "evidences" - we cannot convince other people that we are right!...
But we can't do that anyway!
So we are not being asked to give-up very much.
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*I am not saying that the Book of Mormon is entirely or even mostly fictitious - IMO it does seem to include a good measure of objective fact and other phenomena that suggest that at least some of it was divinely inspired and "true", rather than "made-up". Nonetheless it is a valid example of Spiritual History because of the BoM's provenance and role in Mormonism.
**As with the BoM; I am not suggesting that there is zero objective fact in the post-ascension Spiritual History of Christianity - but that its development is separable from the beliefs and practices of core- "Christianity".
***We can continue to derive benefit from Spiritual History - as, for instance, I do from the Christmas Story. But, for this to be safe and personally-effective, we must regard the truth and reality of Spiritual History to be a qualitatively different and more personally-validated thing than that of secular history. And this in-turn is something we will need to sort-out for, and from, our-selves. As a favourite example; I regard The Lord of the Rings as a true and real history of the world and Men; but not as an objective or "evidenced" history.
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