A couple of weeks ago I was in New Mexico with a group of a dozen old friends attending our annual golf outing. After a sunny day on the links, each evening we would gather for a serious conversation about what was going on in our lives. One of our number, who grew up in a solid religious family and even attended a Catholic seminary for two years, commented that he is still spiritual, but not religious. It is a statement I have heard over and over from all sorts of people. That same response is affirmed all the way from still dedicated church members to outright atheists.
Recent surveys tell us that 30% of all Americans now classify themselves as "nons"—meaning "no religious preference." A substantial number of the nons say they remain spiritual, even if they have no current religious affiliation or even preference. While the meaning of "religion" may be clearly put, the word "spiritual" is not so easily defined.
In former years it may have had the vaporous indication of
the spirit world, seances, ghosts, table rapping and voices from beyond the
grave. None of the people to whom I have talked, who identify themselves as
spiritual, come anywhere near accepting that definition for themselves. So what
does it mean to be spiritual, but not religious? Basically in today's language
spiritual implies a quest to cultivate the inner life as opposed to focusing on
outward structures and institutions. It most often includes certain practices,
such as meditation, yoga and the concern for the arts. While basically
interior, it is not always an isolated discipline. Meditation can well be a
group activity.
For many the designation is a way to hang on to a value
system learned in some religious body or family without having to accept the
barnacles which come with institutional religion. It remains an appreciation of
what many nons understand to be the ethic of Moses, Jesus, Gandhi or other
great religious leaders. It is probably as close as they want to come to religious
institutions. For more than a few it is the faint aroma of guilt which comes
from living off the ethical capital others have invested.
It may also imply a rejection of religious systems they believe
center on doctrines they no longer believe. They find no use or even truth in
creeds written centuries ago from totally different cultural and philosophic
worlds. Things like the virgin birth, miracles or the blood atonement violate
what they believe about the natural world. Beyond being puzzled, they may laugh
that people still believe in a six day creation and the story of Noah and his
menagerie. When it comes to the debate between science and religion, science
wins hands down.
Many of the spiritual nons are fully aware of the pogroms,
wars, bloodshed, narrowness, witch trials and child abuse, bigotries of all
kinds which litter religious history. And then there are the contemporary
examples I described in my two previous columns. Many of the nons believe "Christian"
means "fundamentalist." Others are not hostile to religion or religious people
and their institutions, they just see them as irrelevant to their lives or the
world in which they live. Churches are often viewed as middle-class social
clubs for people who enjoy that sort of thing—and they don’t.
What is startling about the above litany is the truth about
most of the reasons contemporary religion is at best discounted, and at worst
despised. Indeed, if I believed that this description was all there is to
religion, I would place my banner in the nons camp. To the extent that religion
offers that face to thinking young people, and even to greybeards like me, it
deserves to be ignored.
While the above description has validity, it is not the
whole truth—or even its core. But that’s for next week’s column.
Charles Bayer
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