I just received a notice from our Conference Minister Mike Denton that Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Tacoma, WA, is doing a series with the title "I am Spiritual but not Religious." It is, as the notice says, something that we hear a lot around here. Our region here in western Washington is famously un-churched, with the percentage of our people who regularly attend religious services among the lowest for any region of the country. Yet many people here identify themselves as spiritual not secular. We often hear people say that they find their connection with God, or with Spirit, in nature, among the mighty peaks, towering cedars, and sparkling waters of this beautiful corner of God's creation. These people do not find any connection with God in and through any specific religious tradition. They do not attend church. They do not practice the rites of any organized religion. Indeed, for the most part they reject all organized religion, seeing nothing of value in it (or at least not enough of value to induce them to participate in it). This position on matters spiritual and religious of so many of the people of this area raises a number of questions of vital import. Those of us who find our connection to God within a religious tradition are well advised seriously to consider those questions.
Any inquiry into those questions must begin, as all serious inquiries begin, with definitions. The statement that a person is spiritual but not religious requires first of all that we understand what we mean by the words "spiritual" and "religious." I deal with the meaning of those terms some in Chapter 6 of my book Liberating Christianity: Overcoming Obstacles to Faith in the New Millennium. There I define spirituality as "the way we live our relationship with the spiritual." p. 60 By "the spiritual" I mean the spiritual dimension of reality to which the symbol "God" points. The spiritual is "a reality beyond the reality that we humans perceive with our ordinary senses." Liberating Christianity, p. 18 Using terms from Paul Tillich I call the spiritual the depth dimension of reality and the more in everything that is. It is impossible to be more specific than that about what the spiritual is. We experience it; but our words cannot grasp it, for our words come from the realm of ordinary sense perception and experience, and the spiritual infinitely transcends that ordinary realm while nonetheless being immanent in it.
When we define spirituality as our lived relationship with the spiritual it becomes clear that everyone has a spirituality, for everyone has a lived relationship with the spiritual. That relationship may be positive, an affirmation of the spiritual and an intentional way of making it part of our lives. It may be negative, a denial of the reality of the spiritual, that denial being negative but nonetheless a lived relationship with the spiritual.
If spirituality is our lived relationship with the spiritual, what then is religion? A religion is a specific tradition that contains myths, symbols, and rituals the legitimate function and purpose of which is connect people with the spiritual. Any religion is true to the extent that it fulfills that function and purpose. That is, any religion is true to the extent that it connects people with the spiritual and that with which it connects people is really the spiritual. Any religion is false to the extent that it does not connect people with the spiritual or to the extent that it connects people with something that is not really the spiritual, usually to itself or some artifact that it uses, in Protestant Christianity usually the Bible and in Roman Catholic Christianity usually the Church.
If then a religion is a tradition that contains myths, symbols, and rituals the legitimate function and purpose of which is to connect people with the spiritual, and if spirituality is our lived relationship with the spiritual, it is clear that religions are precisely specific types of spirituality. One can be religious without being spiritual if one's religion functions in an idolatrous way to connect one to something that is not truly the spiritual; but one cannot be authentically religious without being spiritual. Religion is not something other than spirituality. Properly understood and practiced, religion is precisely a type of spirituality.
The question remains, however: Why do so many people draw a sharp distinction between spirituality and religion, as they do when they claim that they are spiritual but not religious? It seems clear that to these people religion in general and Christianity in particular do not function as a spirituality. A great many people do not see religion as a useful way to connect with the spiritual; so if the legitimate function and purpose of religion is to connect people with the spiritual, what explains the disconnect between religion and spirituality in the minds of so many people?
Surely at least a part of the answer to that question is that the religions, in our culture Christianity in particular, have strayed from their legitimate function and purpose. For the most part the Christian churches in our culture do not present themselves as a way for people to connect with the spiritual. They present themselves as repositories of the one eternal truth through which, and only through which, a person can find salvation. They present themselves not as systems of myth, symbol, and ritual but as holders of divinely revealed factual truth. They present themselves not as places where a person can freely explore her relationship with the spiritual through the church's myths, symbols, and rituals but as places where a person is given the truth, indeed where a person is given not only the only correct answers but the only correct questions as well. They present themselves not as places where a person can truly be who he is, where he can find wholeness and abundant life, but as places of narrowly dogmatic teaching and narrowly judgmental morality. Given that reality of most of the churches among us it is not surprising that so many people seek their connection with the spiritual elsewhere. It is not surprising that so many people describe themselves as spiritual but not religious.
Surely a person can find her connection with the spiritual outside of the churches. Most of us, I suspect, have felt the reality of God, of the spiritual, in the beauty of nature, in the power of great art, in the love of family, in the laughter of a child. So if we can find an authentic connection with the spiritual outside of religion, is there any legitimate function of religion left? Yes, I think there is. When religion is properly understood as a system of myths, symbols, and rituals the purpose and function of which is to connect a person with the spiritual, religion becomes a deeper, more substantial, more solid form of spirituality than any spirituality that lacks meaningful myth, symbol, and ritual. We see that depth, that substance, of a religious type of spirituality in the extreme events of life. If I were given a terminal cancer diagnosis, for example, I know that I would find little comfort, little hope, little solace in nature. I know that I would find those priceless things in the myths, symbols, and rituals of Christianity. Christianity gives me the myth of resurrection and eternal life. Christianity gives me the symbol of the cross, to which I can cling as the sign and seal of God's unshakable solidarity with me in my time of pain and distress. Christianity gives me the holy sacrament of the Eucharist, in which I enact my solidarity with Christ and Christ's solidarity with me. Christianity gives me holy scripture that speaks of God's steadfast mercy and love. Christianity gives me pastors with whom to share my fear and who assure me of God's unfailing grace. In the extreme times of life, religion properly understood becomes a spirituality with the power to save, in this life and beyond this life.
Spiritual not religious? Yes, it is possible to be spiritual without being religious; but spirituality and religion are not opposed to one another. They are not contradictory ways of living one's relationship with the spiritual. Rather, religion properly understood is a spirituality, a spirituality with power proven over the centuries in the lives of real people. In true religion we find our connection with the spiritual, a connection with depth and substance that can help us through life come what may.
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