Spiritual, But Not Religious
That's the title of a book I saw reviewed at Beliefnet, and the article's blirb states, More than one fifth of Americans describe themselves with this phrase. What does it mean to be spiritual but not religious? Here's some of the article ...
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A large number of Americans identify themselves as "spiritual but not religious." It is likely that perhaps one in every five persons (roughly half of all the unchurched) could describe themselves in this way. This phrase probably means different things to different people .....
Before the 20th century the terms religious and spiritual were used more or less interchangeably. But a number of modern intellectual and cultural forces have accentuated differences between the "private" and "public" spheres of life. The increasing prestige of the sciences, the insights of modern biblical scholarship, and greater awareness of cultural relativism all made it more difficult for educated American to sustain unqualified loyalty to religious institutions. Many began to associate genuine faith with the "private" realm of personal experience rather than with the "public" realm of institutions, creeds, and rituals. The word spiritual gradually came to be associated with a private realm of thought and experience while the word religious came to be connected with the public realm of membership in religious institutions, participation in formal rituals, and adherence to official denominational doctrines.
A group of social scientists studied 346 people representing a wide range of religious backgrounds in an attempt to clarify what is implied when individuals describe themselves as "spiritual, but not religious." Religiousness, they found, was associated with higher levels of interest in church attendance and commitment to orthodox beliefs. Spirituality, in contrast, was associated with higher levels of interest in mysticism, experimentation with unorthodox beliefs and practices, and negative feelings toward both clergy and churches .....
Forsaking formal religious organizations, these people have instead embraced an individualized spirituality that includes picking and choosing from a wide range of alternative religious philosophies. They typically view spirituality as a journey intimately linked with the pursuit of personal growth or development .....
Finally, we also know a few things about today's unchurched seekers as a group. They are more likely than other Americans to have a college education, to belong to a white-collar profession, to be liberal in their political views, to have parents who attended church less frequently, and to be more independent in the sense of having weaker social relationships ....
An idea or practice is "spiritual" when it reveals our personal desire to establish a felt-relationship with the deepest meanings or powers governing life.
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Sigh - I'm getting depressed about the asserted connection between being "religious" and being a slack-jawed yokel with a bent towards totalitarianism.
For another pov on the difference between a personal journey and a more public and organized approach, here's a little from An Interview with John Dominic Crossan - "Paul and Empire" - Adam S. Miller, Journal of Philosophy and Scripture ......
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JPS: This line of thought brings me directly to my next question. In a paper that you delivered in September 1997 at Villanova University you express concern about what you call the "long slow victory of Gnostic [Christianity] over Catholic Christianity."2 Could you address the nature of your reservations about the contemporary dominance of "Gnostic" readings of scripture? And do these concerns connect with the reservations you just expressed about fantasy?
JDC: Yes, absolutely. Let me put it in a larger framework. One thing that I noticed in researching for this book is that way back in the beginning of the last century, 1907, two different scholars, a British scholar named William Mitchell Ramsay and a German scholar named Gustav Adolph Deissmann, got on a train and a boat and a horse and went around the Pauline sites and saw the inscriptions that say that Caesar Augustus was divine, was the son of god, was god, was lord, was redeemer, was savior of the world. They saw all that and they said, as it were: Oh, my God! That is what it's all about! They saw that when Jesus was called by those same titles it was not simply the result of picking up the cultural debris of his contemporary world. It was saying, in effect: these are the titles of Caesar, but we refuse them to Caesar and assign them instead to Jesus. They were not simply applying to Jesus ordinary words in everyday language. So in 1907 these scholars saw the implications. But instead of the twentieth century building a theology on this realization - which of course would have been one-hundred percent political and one-hundred percent religious, something capable of pointing to that deep basis where religion and politics coincide - we went off into existential demythologization and it was the last thing the twentieth century needed. We went into a kind of personalized, existentialized individualism when what we needed was the kind of powerful political/religious understanding of Christianity authentic to the first century. I'm not even talking about an application of it. I'm just talking about seeing what was there, seeing why Jesus was crucified, seeing that the Romans got it right. That's part of what I see happening right now. On the one hand we have - though they are only straws in the wind at the moment, they are big straws in a big wind - a growing insistence on the political and religious implications of Christianity. I'm extremely excited. This is not just talking politics but talking about what Jesus called the kingdom of God, what Paul called the Lordship of Christ, which is simply a way of saying who is in charge of the world. And counterpointed with this I find a Gnosticism that coalesces magnificently with American individualism - inside not outside, religion not politics, spirituality not religion - everything that makes the whole thing Gnostic and safe ...
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Hopefully most of us combine elements of religion and spirituality to a greater or lesser degree, with only the people at either pole as examples of, on the one hand, dead orthodoxy, and on the other, narcissistic utilitarianism ... :-)
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A large number of Americans identify themselves as "spiritual but not religious." It is likely that perhaps one in every five persons (roughly half of all the unchurched) could describe themselves in this way. This phrase probably means different things to different people .....
Before the 20th century the terms religious and spiritual were used more or less interchangeably. But a number of modern intellectual and cultural forces have accentuated differences between the "private" and "public" spheres of life. The increasing prestige of the sciences, the insights of modern biblical scholarship, and greater awareness of cultural relativism all made it more difficult for educated American to sustain unqualified loyalty to religious institutions. Many began to associate genuine faith with the "private" realm of personal experience rather than with the "public" realm of institutions, creeds, and rituals. The word spiritual gradually came to be associated with a private realm of thought and experience while the word religious came to be connected with the public realm of membership in religious institutions, participation in formal rituals, and adherence to official denominational doctrines.
A group of social scientists studied 346 people representing a wide range of religious backgrounds in an attempt to clarify what is implied when individuals describe themselves as "spiritual, but not religious." Religiousness, they found, was associated with higher levels of interest in church attendance and commitment to orthodox beliefs. Spirituality, in contrast, was associated with higher levels of interest in mysticism, experimentation with unorthodox beliefs and practices, and negative feelings toward both clergy and churches .....
Forsaking formal religious organizations, these people have instead embraced an individualized spirituality that includes picking and choosing from a wide range of alternative religious philosophies. They typically view spirituality as a journey intimately linked with the pursuit of personal growth or development .....
Finally, we also know a few things about today's unchurched seekers as a group. They are more likely than other Americans to have a college education, to belong to a white-collar profession, to be liberal in their political views, to have parents who attended church less frequently, and to be more independent in the sense of having weaker social relationships ....
An idea or practice is "spiritual" when it reveals our personal desire to establish a felt-relationship with the deepest meanings or powers governing life.
******************************
Sigh - I'm getting depressed about the asserted connection between being "religious" and being a slack-jawed yokel with a bent towards totalitarianism.
For another pov on the difference between a personal journey and a more public and organized approach, here's a little from An Interview with John Dominic Crossan - "Paul and Empire" - Adam S. Miller, Journal of Philosophy and Scripture ......
**********************************
JPS: This line of thought brings me directly to my next question. In a paper that you delivered in September 1997 at Villanova University you express concern about what you call the "long slow victory of Gnostic [Christianity] over Catholic Christianity."2 Could you address the nature of your reservations about the contemporary dominance of "Gnostic" readings of scripture? And do these concerns connect with the reservations you just expressed about fantasy?
JDC: Yes, absolutely. Let me put it in a larger framework. One thing that I noticed in researching for this book is that way back in the beginning of the last century, 1907, two different scholars, a British scholar named William Mitchell Ramsay and a German scholar named Gustav Adolph Deissmann, got on a train and a boat and a horse and went around the Pauline sites and saw the inscriptions that say that Caesar Augustus was divine, was the son of god, was god, was lord, was redeemer, was savior of the world. They saw all that and they said, as it were: Oh, my God! That is what it's all about! They saw that when Jesus was called by those same titles it was not simply the result of picking up the cultural debris of his contemporary world. It was saying, in effect: these are the titles of Caesar, but we refuse them to Caesar and assign them instead to Jesus. They were not simply applying to Jesus ordinary words in everyday language. So in 1907 these scholars saw the implications. But instead of the twentieth century building a theology on this realization - which of course would have been one-hundred percent political and one-hundred percent religious, something capable of pointing to that deep basis where religion and politics coincide - we went off into existential demythologization and it was the last thing the twentieth century needed. We went into a kind of personalized, existentialized individualism when what we needed was the kind of powerful political/religious understanding of Christianity authentic to the first century. I'm not even talking about an application of it. I'm just talking about seeing what was there, seeing why Jesus was crucified, seeing that the Romans got it right. That's part of what I see happening right now. On the one hand we have - though they are only straws in the wind at the moment, they are big straws in a big wind - a growing insistence on the political and religious implications of Christianity. I'm extremely excited. This is not just talking politics but talking about what Jesus called the kingdom of God, what Paul called the Lordship of Christ, which is simply a way of saying who is in charge of the world. And counterpointed with this I find a Gnosticism that coalesces magnificently with American individualism - inside not outside, religion not politics, spirituality not religion - everything that makes the whole thing Gnostic and safe ...
*************************************
Hopefully most of us combine elements of religion and spirituality to a greater or lesser degree, with only the people at either pole as examples of, on the one hand, dead orthodoxy, and on the other, narcissistic utilitarianism ... :-)
posted by crystal | 2:40 PM
4 Comments:
Hi Crystal,
Some real food for thought here. I also think that generally we associate spiritual with "good" but I think that it can also be associated with evil as well. As a Christian I would consider Satan Worship as both a religion and as evil.
I once heard a minister say that the spiritual voyage starts with a set of rules, a religion. But as we gain spirituality the rules become less and less important because we come to understand our relation to man and God better. I kind of understand what Christ ment when He said that the law was made for man, not man for the law. Sometimes the law should be ignored under special circumstances.
I find it amazing and fascinating that sometimes I think that I know what a word means, can certainly use it in a meaningful sentence, even spell it, but then find that someone else has a completely different meaning than I do. I think that translating from language to language is even more difficult to impart meaning.
Off the subject. Thanks for the information on "Strings of Fire." Ended up getting a DVD of "Riverdance" and most throughly enjoyed it. Would never have known about it except for you. Thanks.
Hugs,
Mike L
Hi Mike,
It is interesting how words can have such different connotations to different people. Maybe religion is like dance - usually even modern dancers have to learn ballet first. They can deviate from the rules of dance, but they have to learn the rule first :-)
Great post, Crystal. I think that whether we call it spirituality or religion, that community needs to be a part of it for us, otherwise that individualistic "seeking inward" risks being turned into a narcissistic exercise in self-gratification. It becomes a sort of self-help program or an adornment rather than a quest for God. Communities usually demand certain things of you. Our relationships with other humans usually do... I wonder if those focused on "spirituality over religion" are really just those who are not serious enough about spirituality to want to be bothered when it comes down to the crunch.
I find Crossan to be a fascinating guy, with some deep, deep insights. His years as a Servite monk were not wasted. For all of his "heterodoxy", I think he is a profoundly impressive Christian. He has a way about him that suggests to me that he really "gets" the heart of Christianity, even if he gets too tripped up in rationalism sometimes.
We have fought for so long to separate Christianity from the political, and for very good reasons, obviously, but perhaps we have gone too far in that direction and have bled out too much of how political it may have actually been in its origins. At least in a way that we are not used to thinking about.
Hi Jeff,
I think you're right about community. I'm not good at being part of one, but I recognise the importance of it.
I like Crossan too - he's my favorite of the Jesus Seminar guys.
BTW, about James Alison - I'm glad you liked that article. He has a lot of his writing posted at his site. I've been reading for a while, and still haven't read everything there. In the intro to one of the books of his I have, he talks a little about being a Dominican and how it was to lose that.
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