Spiritual but not religious? Okay, but you'll be hungry in an hour

Religion is an institution, a public tradition, and oftentimes a narrowly-defined (and sometimes cruelly strict) body of rules.

People may benefit from religion, find it enhances their relationship with the divine, and (hopefully) use it to better the world. However, religion is not absolutely necessary for a true, thriving connection with God (known by whatever name you choose).

Spirituality is a personal relationship, potentially a profound ongoing experience with God/the sacred that can be carried and nourished internally and put into action with or without religion.

"You'll be hungry in an hour" presumes that a mostly spiritual practice is "eating" something of little nutritional value. I have seen spirituality--and known it personally--as exactly the opposite, and I am blessedly well-fed.

Apagan: I recently was in Italy on vacation with my family and was struck by the collision of religions there. Primarily, the destruction (or attempt) of anything Roman/pagan by the new religion. Old temples built over with churches, rope marks in the Roman Forum where they attempted to bring down Roman columns, etc. Then to visit the Vatican and see the aggregation of wealth and power and lack of transparency through sovereignty of the Vatican City. Many of the churches in Italy were built around 1000-1100 & I'm thinking about the crusades. Wow, brutal.

Right, NX:

""But is that only the current state? Christianity has always been a male dominated, control & money obsessed entity. As I recall from a Smithsonian exhibit on the Vikings about 15 years ago, Leif Eriksson converted to Christianity as a means of aggregating power through the 'new' christian church structure. Obsessing over sex, money and power has never been spiritual sustenance & organized religion has failed to deliver spirituality. I don't seem to follow the logic that the spiritual but not religious will leave people hungry.""

Christianity has 'become' such a corrupt political and economically-destructive force obsessed with sexual and other control in large measure just because it's always been that way: and part of the problem is that Christians don't tend to be very honest with themselves about how they got so much power and influence and sense of entitlement in the first place:

Their own myths about themselves say that everyone voluntarily converted and converts to Christianity just cause they went around being just such swell people.

This isn't the history, actually. They actually got all that power and control by *disrupting* every society they encounter, creating stress and internal strife, and then offering advantage to local chieftains through their patriarchal sense of property, power, control, and outside backing. Much more top-down than they want to claim now.

(It's a bit of a credit that they don't *want* to be about that, but denial won't get the corruption and imperialism out)

The ancient world we're familiar with wasn't the 'matriarchal paradise' some talk about, but there *were* some hard-won social balances among all those conquered peoples like our ancestors that Christianity became all about *disrupting.*

Works nice if you want to 'convert the world,' ...not so nice if you care about people or actually believe spirituality is supposed to involve something sacred once in a while.

Professor Thistlewaite, you're ignoring one of the most important reasons that people like me have turned their backs on organized religion and become 'unaffiliated', if not outright atheist: the old myths don't work any longer. They don't work because they no longer provide meaning or a sense of one's place in the world.

Our problem is not merely that organized religion has become toxic, but that we have realized that existence has no inherent meaning. It is up to us to decide what our lives mean, and what our purpose is to be, and "to love and glorify God" just doesn't cut it any longer.

Until mainline Christianity can offer a better purpose in life than service and obedience to a God that probably doesn't even exist, let alone care about the human race, young people will continue to turn their backs on the Church and try to find their own way. They won't have a choice.

God is dead, we have killed him, and now we must decide for ourselves the meaning of life. Nihilism is not an option.

I agree with Ms. Thistlethwaite on the current state of organized religion & Anne Rice's reasons for abandoning organized religion. But is that only the current state? Christianity has always been a male dominated, control & money obsessed entity. As I recall from a Smithsonian exhibit on the Vikings about 15 years ago, Leif Eriksson converted to Christianity as a means of aggregating power through the 'new' christian church structure. Obsessing over sex, money and power has never been spiritual sustenance & organized religion has failed to deliver spirituality. I don't seem to follow the logic that the spiritual but not religious will leave people hungry.
(I realize I'm focused on Christianity here, but that is what has shaped our western world for the last 2000 years.)

And, GivemeThat:

""Ms Thistlewaite embarrassingly posits that people are leaving religious institutions because they don't welcome the GLBTQ crowd.""

I think that's quite straightforward: why would GLBT folks look for spirituality from people who insist they're inherently anti-spiritual somehow?

Actually, it's the *anti-gay agenda* that wants things to go back to some place where people like me have to kneel to things we don't believe in and that hate us for fear of social scorn.

Too many Christians have in fact *reduced* Christianity to an obsession with sexual and religious control of others.

While this may make some sects more *polarized,* it hardly makes them more spiritual. It's certainly no bargain for *straight* people to be told that there's nothing more to their souls than obsessing over others' sex lives and making your own about shame. For those who *want* to believe that they get pie in the sky as long as they hate or hurt others, I'm sure some more 'hard-line' churches are a real bargain: they don't have to improve themselves to get some kind of fix.

Never have to *make* hard choices in their own lives, if they only stack choices up to be *too* hard to be part of their humanity.

This is how the authoritarian religions become associated with nothing more than sanctifying greed, hypocrisy, jealousy, and hatred. With shame and attending arrogance. With being so obsessed with humanity being awful and needing to submit to *authority* that when you *become* authority, you turn into monsters.

A spiritual life is one in which one perhaps realizes, 'Yes, I 'may' have all the sex I and someone else wants, so I have to find where *enough* is.' 'Yes, there's nothing inherently wrong with having *things,* so I have to find where 'enough' is and be in some kind of right relationship with others about it.'

Too many people and institutions think 'religion' goes hand in hand with the idea that a human must be some insatiable beast that can never be satiated. And they thus fail to nurture anything better.

Only fear and control.

All religions have better than that within them. But what do they choose to *use?*

Choosing to think 'God hates gays' and calling that 'essential to salvation' from... What. A world they keep filling with strife and blindness and helplessness? ...may be something a lot of people have reduced their religion to, but that doesn't 'save souls,' it crushes spirits.

Frankly, if all the spiritual people *leave* and only those who *want* to reduce their religion to a means of sexual control and social and political dominance, well, to swipe a saying of yours, that's one way you might 'gain the world'

And lose your soul.

Heh, Lepi: I think you beat me to it:

""Rev, I think you've got it backwards. Spirituality is the substance of the meal. Religion is the form and trappings of the dinner party.

While dining with other is often pleasant, gathering around the table when there is no food will not keep you from starvation.

Posted by: lepidopteryx ""

I think one of the major *problems* about organized Christianity is that they can't even seem to hear what people actually *say:* they're so used to simply denying what people actually feel spiritually that if SNBR people say on the way out the door, 'This isn't spiritual to me,' the response of religion is to say, 'Yes it is!' Just like when someone says, 'You're hurting us!' the reflex is to say, 'No we're not!'

Then they trot out rationales based on the religious structure and authority why people are 'wrong' to think that. Maybe it's more obvious with the dry and pretty kinds of formalized religion, but it's also true of kinds that simply get people all agitated and call *that* spiritual. They raise a bunch of energy, but for the most part only to the end of containing people within the authority of the institutions.

My departure from the religion I was raised in, I reflect, was very much about the fact that though I was having profound spiritual experiences we'd surely recognize in a Pagan context: what they called 'Religion' in the Church didn't even *register* as being the same sort of thing.

Part of the problem here is that institutionalized book religions tend to see spirituality as essentially something that can only be *contained* and then *doled out* by religious authorities: as about *control.* Tellingly, these religions believe that 'Religion' itself can be destroyed. (We kind of know better, eh? Still here, aren't we.)

Practice and shared ritual and other things are important, but I think we both know that from a Pagan perspective, maybe it's the dinner, but it certainly isn't the *food.*

Ms. Brooks Thistlethwaite seems shockingly ignorant of Zen Buddhism. When she says, "Zen Buddhism is centered in a meditative practice that emphasizes direct experience rather than formal creeds or scriptures," she is either ignorant of or willfully denying the fact that it is Mayahana scriptures themselves which point to transcendance beyond their literal textual interpretations. This is especially true of the Lankavatara and Lotus sutras, but also found in the Perfection of Wisdom sutras as well.

Finally, despite what some theists (or some atheists) might insist, Zen Buddhism is a bonafide religion, which is practice centered, as opposed to demanding a fixed creedal correctness. As even Western philosophers such as William Barrett have shown the logical conundra present with the rote assent of a creed, a practice centered religion is the best hope of authenticity, and therein lies the problem of today's Western monotheist religions.

Ms. Brooks Thistlethwaite seems shockingly ignorant of Zen Buddhism. When she says, "Zen Buddhism is centered in a meditative practice that emphasizes direct experience rather than formal creeds or scriptures," she is either ignorant of or willfully denying the fact that it is Mayahana scriptures themselves which point to transcendance beyond their literal textual interpretations. This is especially true of the Lankavatara and Lotus sutras, but also found in the Perfection of Wisdom sutras as well.

Finally, despite what some theists (or some atheists) might insist, Zen Buddhism is a bonafide religion, which is practice centered, as opposed to demanding a fixed creedal correctness. As even Western philosophers such as William Barrett have shown the logical conundra present with the rote assent of a creed, a practice centered religion is the best hope of authenticity, and therein lies the problem of today's Western monotheist religions.

Ms Thistlewaite embarrassingly posits that people are leaving religious institutions because they don't welcome the GLBTQ crowd. Is that so, Ms Thistlewaite? The so called religious institutions that are "inclusive", i.e., the have caved to the homosexual agenda are the ones who memberships are plummeting. Religious organizations that are "exclusive" are the ones that are holding their own or growing, e.g., Mormonism or Assemblies of God.

The so-called progressive denominations are filled with nominal Christians. These are the ones that are dropping out and checking the "spiritual but not religious" box.

As the old song goes, “breaking up is hard to do.” It’s hard for both parties and some of us handle it with more grace than others. This week Anne Rice broke up with Christianity, and Christianity is having a fit. “You’ll come back,” screams Religion. “You’re life is meaningless without me!”

Anne Rice joins a growing number of Americans that are ending their relationship with organized religion. They have just grown apart. Religion wants everything to stay the same, but an estimated seventy million Americans are not interested in a relationship they find controlling, demanding, inflexible, and in some cases, abusive. Religion doesn’t want them hanging out with their gay friends or listening to powerful women leaders. Religion tells them to stop asking questions and just do as their told. Religion doesn’t give them the support to flourish as their true selves. Is it any wonder that so many people are calling themselves Spiritual But Not Religious (SBNR)?

The voice of Religion manifests through the writing and sermons of theologians that who, for the most part, derive their income from being the mouth piece of Religion. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, Father Jim Martin, and pastors around the country are bemoaning the surge of breakups. They warn about loss of community, spiritually flabbiness and the narcissism of thinking you can connect with The Divine without the structure of Religion. “What about the children!” But when we understand their rants are ultimately driven by the death of the relationship, we can be compassionate to their emotional outbursts. The SBNR community has moved on. Religion has not.

Institutionalized Religion is outdated technology. It is legacy stuff that can’t be updated or easily integrated. Spirituality evolves; religion has not. Those in the “know” are moving to open source spirituality. They are seeking out best practices for the human experience and connecting with others locally, nationally, and globally to keep tabs on what works, and what does not. The SBNR community is a nurturing ecosystem of spiritual seekers, that while having different individual perspectives and practices, acknowledge we are all interconnected in this human experience. Spirituality is like Love. It’s hard to define, but when you are experiencing it, you know it.

Anne Rice has not called herself SBNR but nevertheless she is welcomed by a diverse community that affirms her choice to end a bad relationship. Anne, we know it was a tough decision and you’ll miss Religion in some ways. But Religion just was not who you thought it was and you are better off now. Good for you girl! Now get your groove on with God!

Steve Frazee
Executive Director, SBNR.org

http://SBNR.org
http://facebook.com/SBNR.org

I couldn't have put it better than LEPIDOPTERYX did. Well said. The article is a fine example of close-minded projection.

**Spirituality is the sweetness of religion, the effervescent taste of the divine. Religion, on the other hand, is the fiber. You've got to have some fiber, some strength of tradition, ritual and sacred texts, to get you through the day.**

Rev, I think you've got it backwards. Spirituality is the substance of the meal. Religion is the form and trappings of the dinner party.

While dining with other is often pleasant, gathering around the table when there is no food will not keep you from starvation.