Some thoughts (from a Facebook exchange) on “religion” versus “spirituality”:
My friend Galen sent me this:
“Are there dangers in being ‘spiritual but not religious’?” http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/personal/06/03/spiritual.but.not.religious/index.html
Hmmm…sounds a little biased, but thought you might be interested
My reply:
Interesting… All things that have been said before. It only looks biased because it’s framed by the Jesuit priest’s comments. I think it sounds like his church-ego’s at stake :]
All these terms–religion, faith, spirituality, institution–have slippery definitions, but I could put it this way:
My “religious” values come from my high school, which is guided by the Episcopal church (also the church I grew up alongside). So my sense of relationship and obligation to community–the Jesuit’s proclaimed concerns–are tied to the institutions that I fell in with by chance during my formative years. But since I don’t believe that Jesus has the power to condemn or save my soul, those traditions can’t govern my spirituality. (And thus, I’m not supposed to call myself “Christian.”)
To me “spirituality” is the more mystical side of “religion.” My spirituality–my understanding of the connectedness of the universe, my sense of place in it, and my attention to my relationship with it–develops from what I feel, what I learn, and what makes sense to me. That stuff’s informed by my Episcopal background to some degree, but only as much as that tradition fits into the rest of my experience.
Since a mystical experience is by definition a -personal- experience with the divine, who cares if other people see it the same way? What’s important to society is the way people act. Although one might suppose that most religious people’s actions relate to their understandings of relationships with gods, really the only traceable and potentially controllable elements are the rulebooks (i.e. the Ten Commandments). But political laws are easier to agree on (when people aren’t mixing them up with salvation theology), and they take care of the same things…
p.s. to the Jesuit: If I stand by my little speech above, I do seem to give the Episcopal church partial credit for forming the more charitable of my values. True, but only partial credit; the man who inspired me in high school was the Headmaster, not the Chaplin… And although their values were identical, the ethos the Headmaster imparted to the school did not depend on the students’ faith in God. The power to guide youths and society, then, is in the hands of educators…
So there! If I seem to imply that organized religion is universally unnecessary or obsolete, that is not my intent. I merely argue against the Jesuit priest’s suggestion that a genuine religious and spiritual life requires it…
