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Spiritual but not Religious

Illustration by Rachel Salomon. Cover design by  Point Five Design .

Winter/Spring 2010

By Amy Hollywood

Most of us who write, think, and talk about religion are by now used to hearing people say that they are spiritual, but not religious. With the phrase generally comes the presumption that religion has to do with doctrines, dogmas, and ritual practices, whereas spirituality has to do with the heart, feeling, and experience. The spiritual person has an immediate and spontaneous experience of the divine or of some higher power. She does not subscribe to beliefs handed to her by existing religious traditions, nor does she engage in the ritual life of any particular institution. At the heart of the distinction between religion and spirituality, then, lies the presumption that to think and act within an existing tradition—to practice religion—risks making one less spiritual. To be religious is to bow to the authority of another, to believe in doctrines determined for one in advance, to read ancient texts only as they are handed down through existing interpretative traditions, and blindly to perform formalized rituals. For the spiritual, religion is inert, arid, and dead; the practitioner of religion, whether consciously or not, is at best without feeling, at worst insincere. 1

You hear this kind of criticism of religious belief and practice not only among those who call themselves spiritual, but also within religious traditions. For centuries now, Christians have fought over the interplay between authority and tradition, on the one hand, and feeling, enthusiasm, and experience on the other. They have also fought over what kind of experience is properly spiritual or religious. What all sides in these debates share, and what they share with those who understand themselves as spiritual rather than religious, is the presumption that authority and tradition will kill—or, if you are on the other side of the debate, reign in or properly temper—experience. Whereas some American Protestants, for example, insist that one can best know, love, and be saved by God without extraordinary experiences of God’s presence—or with inward experiences rather than with those marked by bodily signs such as tears, shouts, convulsions, outcries, or visions—various revivalist, Holiness, and Pentecostal movements argue that without an intensely felt experience of God, one knows and feels nothing of the divine and so cannot be saved. 2

Modern theologians and scholars of religion from Friedrich Schleiermacher and Samuel Taylor Coleridge to William James and his many followers have understood religion itself in terms of experience—and they have also wrestled with the question of what precisely we mean when we talk about religious experience. Yet Wayne Proudfoot and others critical of the emphasis on religious experience in contemporary theology and religious studies argue that what is at stake for Schleiermacher, James, and their heirs is an attempt to identify an independent realm of experience that is irreducible to other forms of experience. This can serve either as a protectionist strategy, whereby the religious person is able to safeguard her religious experience from naturalistic explanations, or as an academic strategy, whereby a realm is posited over which only specialists in religious studies can claim authority. 3

Running like a thread throughout all these debates—theological, antitheological, historical, philosophical, and those pursued in the interdisciplinary study of religion—lies the attempt to distinguish true from false, sincere from insincere, supernaturally from naturally caused religious or spiritual experience (the terms may differ, but the general point remains the same). With these distinctions comes the recurrent presumption that genuine religious experience is immediate, spontaneous, personal, and affective and, as such, potentially at odds with religious institutions and their texts, beliefs, and rituals. As a number of scholars of religion—as well as Christian theologians—have recently shown, the danger in these discussions is that they miss the ways in which, for many religious traditions, ancient texts, beliefs, and rituals do not replace experience as the vital center of spiritual life, but instead provide the means for engendering it. At the same time, human experience is the realm within which truth can best be epistemologically and affectively (if we can even separate the two) demonstrated. 4

Here I will focus on Christianity, the tradition I know best, and in particular on Christianity in early and medieval Western Europe. Some of the most sophisticated writing about experience in the early and medieval Christian West occurs in works describing and prescribing the best way to live the life of Christian perfection. 5 The various forms of monastic life that emerge in the third and fourth centuries of the Common Era all claim to provide the space in which such perfection might be—if not fully attained—most effectively pursued. The monks and nuns who became the self-described spiritual elite of Christianity through at least the high Middle Ages lived under rules that told them what, when, why, where, and how to act. The most successful of these rules in Western Christianity, the sixth-century Rule of Benedict, is often praised for its flexibility and moderation, yet within it the daily lives of the monks are carefully ordered. Written by Benedict of Nursia (ca. 480–550) for his own community, the rule, and variants of it written for the use of women, became the centerpiece of monastic life in Western Europe during the Middle Ages. If ritual is the repeated and formalized practice of particular actions within carefully determined times and places, the moment in which what we believe ought to be the case and what is the case in the messy realm of everyday action come together, then the Benedictine’s life is one in which the monk or nun strives to make every action a ritual action. 6

Benedict described the monastery as a “school for the Lord’s service”; the Latin schola is a governing metaphor throughout the rule and was initially used with reference to military schools, ones in which the student is trained in the methods of battle. 7 Similarly, Benedict describes the monastery as a training ground for eternal life; the battle to be waged is against the weaknesses of the body and of the spirit. Victory lies in love. For Benedict, through obedience, stability, poverty, and humility—and through the fear, dread, sorrow, and compunction that accompany them—the monk will “quickly arrive at that perfect love of God which casts out fear (1 John 4:18).” Transformed in and into love, “all that [the monk] performed with dread, he will now begin to observe without effort, as though naturally, with habit, no longer out of fear of hell, but out of love for Christ, good habit and delight in virtue.” 8

Central to the ritual life of the Benedictine are communal prayer, private reading and devotion, and physical labor. I want to focus here on the first pole of the monastic life, as it is the one that might seem most antithetical to contemporary conceptions of vital and living religious or spiritual experience. Benedict, following John Cassian (ca. 360–430) and other writers on early monasticism, argues that the monk seeks to attain a state of unceasing prayer. Benedict cites Psalm 119: “Seven times a day have I praised you” (verse 164) and “At midnight I arose to give you praise” (verse 62). He therefore calls on his monks to come together eight times a day for the communal recitation of the Psalms and other prayers and readings. Each of the Psalms was recited once a week, with many repeated once or more a day. Benedict provides a detailed schedule for his monks, one in which the biblical injunction always to have a prayer on one’s lips is enacted through the division of the day into the canonical hours.

To many modern ears the repetition of the Psalms—ancient Israelite prayers handed down by the Christian tradition in the context of particular, often Christological, interpretations—will likely sound rote and deadening. What of the immediacy of the monk’s relationship to God? What of his feelings in the face of the divine? What spontaneity can exist in the monk’s engagement with God within the context of such a regimented and uniform prayer life? If the monk is reciting another’s words rather than his own, how can the feelings engendered by these words be his own and so be sincere?

Yet, for Benedict, as for Cassian on whose work he liberally drew, the intensity and authenticity of one’s feeling for God is enabled through communal, ritualized prayer, as well as through private reading and devotion (itself carefully regulated). 9 Proper performance of “God’s work” in the liturgy requires that the monk not simply recite the Psalms. Instead, the monk was called on to feel what the psalmist felt, to learn to fear, desire, and love God in and through the words of the Psalms themselves. For Cassian, we know God, love God, and experience God when our experience and that of the Psalmist come together:

For divine Scripture is clearer and its inmost organs, so to speak, are revealed to us when our experience not only perceives but even anticipates its thought, and the meaning of the words are disclosed to us not by exegesis but by proof. When we have the same disposition in our heart with which each psalm was sung or written down, then we shall become like its author, grasping the significance beforehand rather than afterward. That is, we first take in the power of what is said, rather than the knowledge of it, recalling what has taken place or what does take place in us in daily assaults whenever we reflect on them. 10

When the monk can anticipate what words will follow in a Psalm, not because he has memorized them, but because his heart is so at one with the Psalmist that these words spontaneously come to his mind, then he knows and experiences God. 11

The word translated here as “disposition” is derived from the Latin affectus , from the verb afficio , to do something to someone, to exert an influence on another body or another person, to bring another into a particular state of mind. Affectus carries a range of meanings, from a state of mind or disposition produced in one by the influence of another, to that affection or mood itself. In many instances, affectus simply means love. At the center of ancient and medieval usages is the notion that love is brought into being in one person by the actions of another. Hence, for Cassian, as later for Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1153), our love for God is always engendered by God’s love for us. God acts ( affico ); humans are the recipients of God’s actions (so affectus , the noun, is derived from the passive participle of afficio ). Hence the acquisition of proper spiritual dispositions through habit is itself the operation of the freely given grace that is God’s love. There is no distinction here between mediation (through the words of scripture) and immediacy (that of God’s presence), between habit and spontaneity, or between feeling and knowledge.

Of course, the affects, moods, or dispositions engendered by God are not only those of love and desire. Fear, dread, shame, and sorrow, gratitude, joy, triumph, and ecstasy are all expressed in the Psalms and in the other songs found within scripture. According to Cassian, the Psalms lay out the full realm of human emotion, and by coming to know God in and through these affects, the monk comes to know both himself and the divine:

or we find all of these dispositions expressed in the psalms, so that we may see whatever occurs as in a very clear mirror and recognize it more effectively. Having been instructed in this way, with our dispositions for our teachers, we shall grasp this as something seen rather than heard, and from the inner disposition of the heart we shall bring forth not what has been committed to memory but what is inborn in the very nature of things. Thus we shall penetrate its meaning not through the written text but with experience leading the way.

Here, experience is physical, mental, and emotional: the monk is said both to have passed beyond the body and to let forth in his spirit “unutterable groans and sighs,” to feel “an unspeakable ecstasy of heart,” and “an insatiable gladness of spirit.” 12 The entire body and soul of the monk is affected; he is transformed by the words of the Psalms so that he lives them, and through this experience he comes to know, with heart and body and mind, that God is great and good.

The entire body and soul of the monk is affected; he is transformed by the words of the Psalms so that he lives them.

For Cassian, Christians attain the height of prayer and of the Christian life itself when

every love, every desire, every effort, every undertaking, every thought of ours, everything that we live, that we speak, that we breathe, will be God, and when that unity which the Father now has with the Son and which the Son has with the Father will be carried over into our understanding and our mind, so that, just as he loves us with a sincere and pure and indissoluble love, we too may be joined to him with a perpetual and inseparable love and so united with him that whatever we breathe, whatever we understand, whatever we speak, may be God. 13

Although the fullness of fruition in God will never occur in this life, the monk daily trains himself, through obedience, chastity, poverty, and most importantly prayer, to attain it.

Cassian’s understanding of the role of the Psalms in the monastic life lays the foundation for monastic thought and practice throughout the Middle Ages. Many of the most elegant and emotionally nuanced accounts of experience and its centrality to the religious life can be found in the commentary tradition, in which monks (and occasionally nuns) meditatively reflect on the multiple meanings of scriptural texts. 14 Among the masterworks of medieval commentary, Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermons on the Song of Songs , opens with reference to the centrality of scriptural songs to monastic experience—not only the Psalms, but also the songs of Deborah (Judges 5:1), Judith (Judith 16:1), Samuel’s mother (1 Samuel 2:1), the authors of Lamentations and Job, and all of the other songs found throughout scripture. “If you consider your own experience,” Bernard writes, “surely it is in the victory by which your faith overcomes the world (1 John 5:4) and ‘in your leaving the lake of wretchedness and the filth of the marsh’ (Psalm 39:3) that you sing to the Lord himself a new song because he has done marvelous works (Psalm 97:1)?” 15 Using the language of the Psalms and other biblical texts, writings with which Bernard’s mind and heart is entirely imbued, he describes the path of the soul as sung with and in the words of scripture.

The Song of Songs is the preeminent of songs, the one through which one attains to the highest knowledge of God. “This sort of song,” Bernard explains, “only the touch of the Holy Spirit teaches (1 John 2:27), and it is learned by experience alone.” 16 He thereby calls on his listeners and readers to “read the book of experience” as they interpret the Song of Songs.

Today we read the book of experience. Let us turn to ourselves and let each of us search his own conscience about what is said. I want to investigate whether it has been given to any of you to say, “Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth” (Song of Songs 1:1).

Here Bernard suggests that it is through attention to “the book of experience” that the monk can determine what he has of God and what he lacks. Again, the goal is to see the gap between one’s experience of God’s love and one’s love for God and then to meditate on, chew over, and digest the words of the Song so that one might come more fully to inhabit them. The soul should strive, Bernard insists, to be able to sing with the Bride of the Song, “Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth.” “Few,” Bernard goes on to write, “can say this wholeheartedly.” His sermons are an attempt to bring about in himself and his readers precisely this desire. Only in this way can the soul ever hope to experience the kiss itself and hence to speak with the Bride in her experience of union with the Bridegroom. 17

For Bernard, such experiences of union with the divine are only ever fleeting in this life. Moreover, he is interested in interior experience rather than in any outward expression of God’s presence. Claims to more extended experiences of the divine presence and of the marking of that presence on the mind and body of the believer—in visions, verbal outcries, trances, convulsions, and other extraordinary experiences—will shortly follow (and will be particularly important in texts by and about women). They will spread, moreover, outside of the monastery and convent, into the world of the new religious orders, the semireligious, and the laity. The questions asked in North America about what constitutes true religious experience and what is false or misleading, generated not by God but by the devil or by natural causes, has its origins in similar deliberations generated by such experiences as they came to prominence in the later Middle Ages.

Most important for our discussion is the way in which ritual engagement with ancient texts leads to, articulates, and enriches the spiritual experience of the practitioner. “Mere ritual,” within this context, would be ritual badly performed. True engagement in ritual and devotional practice, on the other hand, is the very condition for spiritual experience. There is a full recognition of the work involved in transforming one’s experience in this way. 18 Yet, at the same time, medieval monastic writers insist that this transformation can occur only through grace. As I suggested above, there is no more contradiction here than there is in the claim that spiritual experience is both mediated and immediate, ritualized and spontaneous. If God acts through scripture, then in reading, reciting, and meditating on scripture one allows oneself to be acted on by God. Work and grace are here thoroughly entwined through love.

To many contemporary readers, however, there might still seem to be something profoundly different between medieval conceptions of spiritual experience and their own. Even among the growing number of Americans who understand certain kinds of practice—meditation, prayer, and devotional reading among them—as essential to their spiritual experience, there is a suspicion of the particular form such practices take within Christianity and other religious traditions. I suspect that what is at issue here is the association of experience itself, and spiritual experience in particular, with what, for lack of a better word, I will call individualism.

A series of common questions seem to underlie many people’s conception of spiritual experience. How am I to have my own experience of the divine? How can I experience the divine personally , and isn’t such a desire rendered impossible within the framework of institutions that direct my understanding and experience of God? What happens to that aspect of my experience that is irreducible to anyone else’s? On the one hand, many who consider themselves spiritual understand their spirituality in terms of an attunement with nature or spirit—something that is bigger than and lies beyond the boundaries of themselves. Yet, on the other hand, there is a keen desire for this experience to be one’s own. What the medieval monk or nun whose ritual performances I have described here strives to attain is an experience of God that is in conformity with that of the Psalmist and other scriptural authors. The experience must become one’s own, and Bernard insists on the continued specificity of the individual soul. Yet, at the same time, to be a true Christian is to share in a common experience of God.

Or perhaps the concern that many have with the rich spirituality of Christian monasticism may be understood in a slightly different way. Perhaps the concern is with the extent to which Christian monastic life—and the forms of devotional life that stem from it—demands a radical submission to something external to oneself. What happens, then, to individual freedom? What happens to the individual responsibility—religious, ethical, and political—that is concomitant with that freedom? Perhaps we can read the contemporary spiritual seeker less as one who makes seemingly solipsistic demands for an experience particular to herself than as one concerned with handing herself over to another—be it the abbot or abbess to whom one promises absolute obedience, the Psalmist whose words one understands as that of God, or divine love itself—that monastic practice demands. 19

Isn’t the desire to constitute oneself as a spiritual person outside of larger communities illusory, in that we are always constituted in and through our interactions with others?

From this perspective, the debate between the “spiritual” and the “religious” (or between “true” and “false” religious experience) is less about their relative authenticity, sincerity, and spontaneity than about the conceptions of the person, God, and their relationship that underlie competing conceptions of spiritual or religious life. Must we hand ourselves completely over to God—and to the texts, institutions, and practices through which God putatively speaks—in order to experience God? Is this what established religious traditions or their “mainline” instantiations demand? How, if this is the case, are these injunctions best understood in relationship to claims to individual autonomy and responsibility? On the other hand, can we ever claim to be fully autonomous and free? Isn’t the desire to constitute oneself as a spiritual person outside of the framework of larger communities illusory, in that we are always constituted in and through our interactions with others and their texts, practices, and traditions? If, as many contemporary philosophers and theorists argue, we are always born into sets of practices, beliefs, and affective relationships that are essential to who we are and who we become, can we ever claim the kind of radical freedom that some contemporary spiritual seekers seem to demand? How might we reconceive our experience—spiritual or religious, whichever term one prefers—in ways that demand neither absolute submission nor resolute autonomy?

In a way, this is precisely what the medieval Christian monastic texts to which I attend here require. Submission must always be submission freely given. Without the will to submit, one’s practices are meaningless and empty. (And if one is forced, by external means, to submit, that too undermines the potential sacrality of one’s practices.) Yet, paradoxically, one’s freely given submission is engendered by God’s love, just as one receives God’s love—and the ever-deepening experience of that love—through engagement in human practices. Whether one accepts the theological claims of medieval Christian monastic writing, it opens up the vital interplay between practice and gift, submission and freedom, the experience of loving and being loved, that plays a continuing role in Western spirituality. Following Cassian, Benedict, and Bernard, I would suggest that it is only when we understand the way in which we are constituted as subjects through practice—all of us, spiritual, religious, and those who make claims to be neither—that we can begin to understand the real nature of our differences.

• For a wonderful study of the development of conceptions of spirituality in the United States, see Leigh Schmidt, Restless Souls: The Making of American Spirituality (HarperOne, 2006).
• See Ann Taves, Fits, Trances, and Visions: Experiencing Religion and Explaining Experience From Wesley to James (Princeton University Press, 1999); and David Hall, “What Is the Place of ‘Experience’ in Religious History?” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 13 (2002): 241–250.
• See Wayne Proudfoot, Religious Experience (University of California Press, 1987); Robert Scharf, “Experience,” in Critical Terms for Religious Studies , ed. Mark C. Taylor (University of Chicago Press, 2000), 94–116; Amy Hollywood, “Gender, Agency, and the Divine in Medieval Historiography,” Journal of Religion 84 (2004): 514–528; and Hall, “Place of ‘Experience,'” 247.
• See, for example, Thinking Through Rituals: Philosophical Perspectives , ed. Kevin Schilbrack (Routledge, 2004); and Robert Wuthnow, After Heaven: Spirituality in America Since the 1950s (University of California Press, 1998).
• This despite the fact that historians and philosophers interested in the category of experience often suggest that there is nothing worthwhile said about it in the Middle Ages. See, most recently, Martin Jay, Songs of Experience: Modern American and European Variations on a Universal Theme (University of California Press, 2005).
• For this account of ritual, see Jonathan Z. Smith, “The Bare Facts of Ritual,” in his Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown (University of Chicago Press, 1988), 53–65.
• Benedict of Nursia, The Rule of St. Benedict 1980 , ed. Timothy Frye, O.S.B. (The Liturgical Press, 1981), “Prologue,” 165.
• Ibid., chap. 7, pp. 201–203.
• The rule also calls on the monks to read, both in private and communally. Specially recommended are the Old and New Testaments, the writings of the Fathers, Cassian’s Conferences and his Institutes , and the Rule of Basil. According to Benedict, all of these works provide “tools for the cultivation of the virtues; but as for us, they make us blush for shame at being so slothful, so unobservant, so negligent. Are you hastening toward your heaving home?” Ibid., chap. 73, p. 297.
• John Cassian, Conferences, trans. Boniface Ramsey, O.P. (Newman Press, 1997), X, XI, p. 384.
• My account throughout is profoundly influenced by Jean Leclercq, O.S.B., The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture , trans. Catherine Misrahi (Fordham University Press, 1961). For a more recent analysis of monastic practice and the formation of the self, one deeply influenced by Leclercq as well, see Talal Asad, “On Discipline and Humility in Medieval Christian Monasticism,” in his Genealogies of Religions: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 125–167.
• Cassian, Conferences , X, XI, p. 385.
• Ibid., X, VII, pp. 375–376.
• In part because of prohibitions against women publicly interpreting scripture, their reflections on experience often take other forms, among them accounts of visions, auditions, and ecstatic experiences of God’s presence or of union with God and—here paralleling Bernard’s practice—commentaries on these experiences.
• Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons on the Song of Songs , in Selected Works , trans. G. R. Evans (Paulist Press, 1987), Sermon 1, V.9, p. 213.
• Ibid., Sermon 1, V.10–11, p. 214.
• Ibid., Sermon 3, I.1, p. 221.
• Here, I would take issue with the simplistic formulation of the relationship between belief and practice suggested by Louis Althusser. Althusser claims that Blaise Pascal said, “more or less: ‘Kneel down, move your lips in prayer, and you will believe.’ ” Althusser’s position is more complicated than these lines would suggest, but they have had an enormous purchase as indicators of an almost behavioralist account of the efficacy of religious (and other forms) of practice. Lost is the sense that mere repetition does little to transform the subject, but rather that one must look to one’s own experience, think, reflect, meditate, and feel the words of scripture, and work constantly to conform the former to the latter. See Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses: Notes Towards an Investigation,” in Lenin and Philosophy, and Other Essays , trans. Ben Brewster (Monthly Review Press, 2001), 114.
• This is precisely the issue faced by Sarah Farmer, the founder in 1884 of the Greenacre community in Eliot, Maine. Farmer brought an eclectic mix of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century spiritual movements together at Greenacre, among them Transcendentalism, New Thought, Ethical Culture, and Theosophy, as well as vibrant interest in non-Western religious traditions. Yet when Farmer became a member of the Baha’i faith—despite that movement’s call for “religious unity, racial reconciliation, gender equality, and global peace,” the more “free-ranging seekers” among her cohort objected strongly to what they saw as her submission to a single religious authority, its texts, beliefs, and practices. On Farmer, see Schmidt, Restless Souls , 181–225. The phrases cited here are on page 186.

Amy Hollywood is the Elizabeth H. Monrad Professor of Christian Studies at HDS.

Please follow our Commentary Guidelines when engaging in discussion on this site.

Spirituality is a broad and subjective concept that encompasses a sense of connection to something greater than oneself. It often involves exploring questions about the meaning of life, the nature of existence, and the purpose of our existence.

Different cultures, belief systems, and philosophies have their own interpretations of spirituality. For some, it is linked to organized religion and faith in a higher power or deity. For others, it may be more secular, focusing on inner peace, mindfulness, and a sense of interconnectedness with the universe.

Hello, I have a similar line of thought. I am atheist but things fell into place about all this a few months ago I did not need to throw away the idea of the all-powerful after all. It is not God. It is greater than all Gods and religions. Some religions believe almost the same thing. The “all powerful all” is simply the totality of what is. It had no mind or beingness at first. It was what we call the big bang. Life evolved with no designer or God. This totality still is all and still has all power. Sentients is within it. We serve the all powerful and its servant. This is a very big very old universe. I speculate very advanced extremely advanced beings are here and can be connected to with prayer and mediation. Of course they agree with spiritual atheism. They also know about the all powerful all. It is where they came from just like us. please check out my website www/thewayoffairness.com.

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Apr 6, 2017

Meet the “Spiritual but Not Religious”

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I’m spiritual but not religious.” You’ve heard it—maybe even said it—before. But what does it actually mean? Can you be one without the other? Once synonymous, “religious” and “spiritual” have now come to describe seemingly distinct (but sometimes overlapping) domains of human activity. The twin cultural trends of deinstitutionalization and individualism have, for many, moved spiritual practice away from the public rituals of institutional Christianity to the private experience of God within . In this conclusion of a two-part series on faith outside the church ( read the first part, on those who “love Jesus but not the church” ), Barna takes a close look at the segment of the American population who are “spiritual but not religious.” Who are they? What do they believe? How do they live out their spirituality daily?

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Two Types of Irreligious Spirituality To get at a sense of spirituality outside the context of institutional religion, Barna created two key groups that fit the “spiritual but not religious” (SBNR) description. The first group (SBNR #1) are those who consider themselves “spiritual,” but say their religious faith is not very important in their life. Though some may self-identify as members of a religious faith (22% Christian, 15% Catholic, 2% Jewish, 2% Buddhist, 1% other faith), they are in many ways irreligious —particularly when we take a closer look at their religious practices. For instance, 93 percent haven’t been to a religious service in the past six months. This definition accounts for the unreliability of affiliation as a measure of religiosity.

A sizable majority of the SBNR #1 group do not identify with a religious faith at all (6% are atheist, 20% agnostic and 33% unaffiliated). In order to get a better sense of whether or not a faith affiliation (even if one is irreligious) might affect people’s views and practices, we created a second group of “spiritual but not religious,” which focuses only on those who do not claim any faith at all (SBNR #2). This group still says they are “spiritual,” but they identify as either atheist (12%), agnostic (30%) or unaffiliated (58%). For perspective, of all those who claim “no faith,” around one-third say they are “spiritual” (34%). This is a stricter definition of the “spiritual but not religious,” but as we’ll see, both groups share key qualities and reflect similar trends despite representing two different kinds of American adults—one more religiously literate than the other. In other words, it does not seem as if identifying with a religion affects the practices and beliefs of these groups. Even if you still affiliate with a religion, if you have discarded it as a central tenet of your life, it seems to hold little sway over your spiritual practices.

These two groups differ from the “love Jesus but not the church” crowd in significant ways. Those who Barna defined as loving Jesus but not the church still strongly identify with their faith (they say their religious faith is “very important in my life today”), they just don’t attend church. This group still holds very orthodox Christian views of God and maintains many of the Christian practices (albeit individual ones over corporate ones). As we’ll see below, though, the “spiritual but not religious” hold much looser ideas about God, spiritual practices and religion.

Demographic Trends: Southwestern and Liberal These two groups equally make up around 8 percent of the population (combined, they make up 11 percent of the population—as there is some overlap between the two). In terms of demographics, there aren’t a lot of surprises here. The groups include more women than men—who generally identify more with religion and spirituality than men—and are concentrated in the West Coast and the South. The former a likely result of the influence of Eastern religions and the latter a result of general religious inclinations. They are mostly Boomers and Gen-Xers, though the first group is slightly older and because fewer young people tend to affiliate with a religion, the second group is slightly younger.

But their political leanings are where it gets interesting: Both groups identify as liberal (50% and 54%) or moderate (33% or 35%), with only a fraction identifying as conservative (17% and 11%). Yes, conservatism and religiosity tend to go hand-in-hand, but this divide is unusually stark. It may be that left-leaning spiritual seekers feel they are without a spiritual home in the church, a place they likely view as hostile to their political attitudes, particularly around hot button—and often divisive—issues like abortion and same-sex marriage.

Redefining “God” As one might expect—and in stark contrast to the “love Jesus but not the church” crowd—both groups of “spiritual but not religious” hold unorthodox views about God or diverge from traditional viewpoints. For instance, they are just as likely to believe that God represents a state of higher consciousness that a person may reach (32% and 22%) than an all-powerful, all-knowing, perfect creator of the universe who rules the world today (20% and 30%). For context, only one in 10 (12%) American adults believe the former, and almost six out of 10 (57%) believe the latter. So these views are certainly out of the norm. The trend continues: They are just as likely to be polytheistic (51% and 52%) as monotheistic (both groups: 48% each), and significantly fewer agree that God is everywhere (41% and 42%) compared to either practicing Christians (92%) or evangelicals (98%). But straying from orthodoxy is not the story here. This feels expected. Sure, their God is more abstract than embodied, more likely to occupy minds than the heavens and the earth. But what’s noteworthy is that what counts as “God” for the spiritual but not religious is contested among them, and that’s probably just the way they like it. Valuing the freedom to define their own spirituality is what characterizes this segment.

Ambivalent Views of Religion By definition, the “spiritual but not religious” are religiously disinclined, and the data bears this out in a number of ways. Firstly, both groups are somewhat torn about the value of religion in general, holding ambivalent views (54% and 46% disagree, and 45% and 53% agree), especially compared to religious groups (i.e. practicing Christians: 85% disagree and evangelicals: 98% disagree). So why the ambivalence? It’s one thing to be disinclined , but it’s another to claim harm . The broader cultural resistance to institutions is a response to the view that they are oppressive, particularly in their attempts to define reality. Seeking autonomy from this kind of religious authority seems to be the central task of the “spiritual but not religious” and very likely the reason for their religious suspicion.

Secondly, as functional outsiders, their view of religious distinctiveness is much looser than their religious counterparts. A majority of both groups (65% and 73%) are convinced that all religions basically teach the same thing, particularly striking numbers compared to evangelicals (1%) and practicing Christians (32%). Again, the “spiritual but not religious” shirk definition. The boundary markers are non-existent, and that’s the point. For them, there is truth in all religions, and they refuse to believe any single religion has a monopoly on ultimate reality.

Spirituality That Looks Within As we’ve seen, to be religious is to be institutional—it is to practice one’s spirituality in accordance with an external authority. But to be spiritual but not religious is to possess a deeply personal and private spirituality. Religions point outside oneself to a higher power for wisdom and guidance, while a spirituality divorced from religion looks within . Only a fraction of the two spiritual but not religious groups (9% and 7%) talk often with their friends about spiritual matters. Almost half (48% each) say they rarely do it, and they are 12 (24%) to eight (17%) times more likely to never talk with their friends about spiritual matters than both practicing Christians and evangelicals (2% each).

Spiritually Nourished on Their Own—and Outdoors Like the “ I love Jesus but not the church ” group, the “spiritual but not religious” live out their spirituality in the absence of the institutional church. But they still take part in a set of spiritual practices, albeit a mish-mash of them. Somewhat unsurprisingly, they are very unlikely to take part in the most religious practices like scripture reading (4% and 10%), prayer (21% and 22%) and even groups or retreats (3% and 2%), particularly compared to the other religious groups. Their spiritual nourishment is found in more informal practices like yoga (15% and 22%), meditation (26% and 34%) and silence and / or solitude (26% and 32%). But their most common spiritual practice is spending time in nature for reflection (40% and 51%). And why not, considering the real sense of personal autonomy gained from time outside. Overall, it’s easy to see why this group, who make sense of their lives and the world outside religious categories, are inclined toward more informal and more individual modes of spiritual practice.

What the Research Means “In the recent study on those who ‘love Jesus but not the church’ , we explored what religious faith outside of institutional religion looks like. In this study, we are exploring what spirituality outside of religious faith looks like,” points out Roxanne Stone, editor in chief at Barna Group. “While this may seem like semantics or technical jargon, we found key differences between these groups. The first is disenchanted with the church; the second is disenchanted with religion. The former still hold tightly to Christian belief, they just do not find value in the church as a component of that belief. The latter have primarily rejected religion and prefer instead to define their own boundaries for spirituality—often mixing beliefs and practices from a variety of religions and traditions.

“They represent an equal percentage of the population,” says Stone. “And, by all indications, both groups are growing. Those who love Jesus but not the church are certainly more favorable toward religion and would likely be more receptive to re-joining the church. Yet, spiritual leaders should not discount this group of the ‘spiritual but not religious.’ They are distinct among their irreligious peers in their spiritual curiosity and openness. The majority of those who have rejected religious faith do not describe themselves as spiritual (65%), similarly two-thirds of those with no faith at all do not identify as spiritual. So those who do—this group of the spiritual but not religious—display an uncommon inclination to think beyond the material and to experience the transcendent. Such a desire can open the door to deep, spiritual conversations and, in time, perhaps a willingness to hear about Christian spirituality. The bent of those conversations necessarily must be different though than with those who love Jesus but not the church. The wounds and suspicions toward church will come from different places—as will their understanding of spirituality. But both groups represent people outside of church who have an internal leaning toward the spiritual side of life.”

Comment on this research and follow our work: Twitter:  @davidkinnaman  |  @roxyleestone  |  @barnagroup Facebook:  Barna Group

About the Research

Interviews with U.S. adults included 1281 web-based surveys conducted among a representative sample of adults over the age of 18 in each of the 50 United States. The survey was conducted in April and November of 2016. The sampling error for this study is plus or minus 3 percentage points, at the 95% confidence level. Minimal statistical weighting was used to calibrate the sample to known population percentages in relation to demographic variables.

Millennials : Born between 1984 and 2002 Gen-Xers : Born between 1965 and 1983 Boomers : Born between 1946 and 1964 Elders : Born between 1945 or earlier

Practicing Christia n: Those who attend a religious service at least once a month, who say their faith is very important in their lives and self-identify as a Christian.

Evangelicals : meet nine specific theological criteria. They say they have made “a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important in their life today,” that their faith is very important in their life today; believe that when they die they will go to Heaven because they have confessed their sins and accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior; strongly believe they have a personal responsibility to share their religious beliefs about Christ with non-Christians; firmly believe that Satan exists; strongly believe that eternal salvation is possible only through grace, not works; strong agree that Jesus Christ lived a sinless life on earth; strong assert that the Bible is accurate in all the principles it teaches; and describing God as the all-knowing, all-powerful, perfect deity who created the universe and still rules it today. Being classified as an evangelical is not dependent on church attendance, the denominational affiliation of the church attended or self-identification. Respondents were not asked to describe themselves as “evangelical.”

Love Jesus but Not the Church : Those who self-identify as Christian and who strongly agree that their religious faith is very important in their life, but are “dechurched” (have attended church in the past, but haven’t done so in the last six months or more). Spiritual but Not Religious #1 : Those who self-identify as spiritual but  say their faith is not very important in their lives. Spiritual but Not Religious #2 : Those who self-identify as spiritual but do not claim any faith (atheist, agnostic or unaffiliated).

© Barna Group, 2017.

About Barna

Since 1984, Barna Group has conducted more than two million interviews over the course of thousands of studies and has become a go-to source for insights about faith, culture, leadership, vocation and generations. Barna is a private, non-partisan, for-profit organization.

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What It Means To Be Spiritual But Not Religious

One in five Americans reject organized religion, but maintain some kind of faith.

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A growing contingent of Americans— particularly young Americans—identify as “spiritual but not religious.” Masthead member Joy wanted to understand why. On our call with Emma Green, The Atlantic ’s religion writer, Joy asked, “What are they looking for?” Because the term “spiritual” can be interpreted in so many different ways, it’s a tough question to answer. I talked to people who have spent a lot of time mulling it over, and came away with some important context for the major shift happening in American faith.

(If you missed our call with Emma Green, you can find the transcript and recording here .)

Americans Who Want Faith, Not a Church

Kern Beare, a Masthead member from Mountain View, California, believes in God and studies the teachings of Jesus. But does he identify with a particular religion? “Never,” he told me. The structure and rigidity of a church, Beare believes, is antithetical to everything Jesus represents. Instead of attending services, he meditates every morning.

Americans are leaving organized religion in droves: they disagree with their churches on political issues; they feel restricted by dogma; they’re deserting formal organizations of all kinds. Instead of atheism, however, they’re moving toward an identity captured by the term “spirituality.” Approximately sixty-four million Americans— one in five —identify as “spiritual but not religious,” or SBNR. They, like Beare, reject organized religion but maintain a belief in something larger than themselves. That “something” can range from Jesus to art, music, and poetry. There is often yoga involved.

“The word ‘church’ means you need to put on uncomfortable shoes, sit up straight, and listen to boring, old-fashioned hymns,” said Matthew Hedstrom, a professor of religion at the University of Virginia. “Spirituality is seen as a larger, freer arena to explore big questions.”  

Because over 92 percent of religiously-affiliated Americans currently identify as Christian, most “spiritual-but-not-religious” people come from that tradition. The term SBNR took off in the early 2000s, when online dating first became popular. “You had to identify by religion, you had to check a box,” Hedstrom told me. “‘Spiritual-but-not-religious’ became a nice category that said, ‘I’m not some kind of cold-hearted atheist, but I’m not some kind of moralizing, prudish person, either. I’m nice, friendly, and spiritual—but not religious.’”

Religion—often entirely determined by your parents—can be central to how others see you, and how you see yourself. Imagine, Hedstrom proffered, if from the time you were born, your parents told you that you were an Italian-Catholic, living in the Italian-Catholic neighborhood in Philadelphia. “You wouldn’t wake up every morning wondering, who am I, and what should I believe?” That would have already been decided. Young people today, Emma said on our call, “are selecting the kinds of communities that fit their values,” rather than adhering to their parent’s choices.

“Spiritual is also a term that people like to use,” said Kenneth Pargament, a professor who studies the psychology of religion at Bowling Green State University. “It has all of these positive connotations of having a life with meaning, a life with some sacredness to it—you have some depth to who you are as a human being.” As a spiritual person, you’re not blindly accepting a faith passed down from your parents, but you’re also not completely rejecting the possibility of a higher power. Because the term “spiritual,” encompasses so much, it can sometimes be adopted by people most would consider atheists. While the stigma around atheism is generally less intense than it used to be, in certain communities, Hedstrom told me, “to say you’re an atheist is still to say you hate puppies.” It’s a taboo that can understandably put atheists, many of whom see their views as warm and open-minded, on the defensive. “Spiritual” doesn’t come with that kind of baggage.

For people who have struggled with faith, embracing the word “spiritual” might also leave a crucial door open. Masthead member Hugh calls himself “spiritual,” but sees the designation as more of a hope or a wish than a true faith. “I hope there is more to this wonderful world than random chemistry... Nonetheless, I do see all of that as an illusion...That does not stop me from seeking something as close to what I wish for as I am able to find.” In his class, “Spirituality in America,” Hedstrom tells his students that the “spiritual-but-not-religious” designation is about “seeking,” rather than “dwelling:” searching for something you believe in, rather than accepting something that, while comfortable and familiar, doesn’t feel quite right. In the process of traveling around, reading books, and experimenting with new rituals, he says, “you can find your identity out there.”

Today’s Wrap Up

Question of the day : For readers who identify as SBNR, how do the descriptions above line up with your beliefs?

Your feedback : We’ve been pouring over your year-end survey responses all week. Thanks for taking the time to tell us how we’re doing. Let us know how you liked what you read today .

What’s coming : A few weeks ago, a member asked us a compelling question about abortion. We're compiling responses from a whole slew of different perspectives.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to [email protected].

Spirituality

Are you religious or spiritual both or neither, does this distinction matter to you, or to humanity.

Posted January 2, 2022 | Reviewed by Pam Dailey

• Religion, or the belief in and worship of a God(s), and spirituality, a sensory/mood/cognitive experience, are not one and the same.
• Religious people feel that their "spirituality" derives from their close relationship with a Supreme Being and from the words of a sacred text.
• Spiritual enlightenment or transcendence can be achieved through God, but can also be realized by a variety of intense experiences.
• Life can be challenging or rewarding; humans have always been on a preternatural quest to to understand the origins and meaning of life.

You’ve probably heard someone say with some degree of confidence , “I am not religious, but I am spiritual.” If so, were you in any way enlightened by those assertive words?

Can a person be spiritual and not religious? How about religious and not spiritual? Can someone be both, or neither? How do you define yourself within this dichotomy?

We seem to agree on the meaning of the word religious , which, simply put, refers to a belief in the existence of a Supreme Being, an omniscient and omnipotent God who somehow introduced humans to this planet.

The declaration, “I am religious,” implies a devotion to God but says nothing about a specific faith, the intensity of that worship, or one's commitment to the “text” of that faith. And, it says nothing about being spiritual.

Many believers revere “pure” belief in their deity and in the sacred words of their religious text, whether the Torah, the Old Testament of the Bible, the scripture of the New Testament, the Qur'an, the Bhagavad Gita, the Theravada, the I Ching, or many others. Fundamentalists in each religion believe those words are factual and absolute truths.

Some contemporary religions try to incorporate current social values and norms in their liturgy and rituals, some embrace members who are equivocal in their beliefs, like agnostics and atheists, while others proselytize to convert nonbelievers to their faith.

Spirituality is different from religion. While it can involve the worship of God, it has more to do with sensory states involving mysticism and awe, beyond the physical self, society, or the world. Spirituality is said to encompass the ineffable (words can’t describe), the noetic (psychic enlightenment), and the metaphysical.

Many believers in God see religion as the source of their spirituality and question whether nonbelievers have the capacity to experience real spiritual enlightenment. Likewise, many nonbelievers feel their spiritual revelations are more authentic and meaningful. But this is obviously not a contest!

From archaeological, anthropological, and historical records, we’ve learned that human beings have always wondered about our origins and the purpose in our lives.

Humans have felt a profound need for meaning in their often challenging lives and have sought an understanding of their place in the infinite cosmos. They have asked existential questions like, “How did I get here?” “Why am I here?” “What am I all about?” Those questions have spawned beliefs in deities and the stories that compose religious scriptures.

Humans seek to understand their existence and many want (need?) to believe there is an overriding purpose in life beyond everyday commerce and consumerism . They look for meaning beyond the material in life, something uplifting, transcendent, even transformative.

Over the centuries millions have found solace in a Supreme Being, especially in times of crisis. They have found inner peace and security in their worship of and personal relationship with God.

But others have turned away from religion. Perhaps they recognize only the physical world, or they’ve heard of prelates who sinned or of brutalities perpetrated in the name of religion. If people cannot find spiritual answers in religion, they look elsewhere for fulfillment or meaning.

Spiritual enlightenment and feeling “at one with the universe,” can be achieved through contemplation and serenity on the one hand and via intense experiences on the other. These can involve evocative group activities, challenging physical accomplishments, profound music, romantic experiences, awe-inspiring art, magical scenic vistas, intense prayer, psychedelic drugs, and other sources which can induce transformative mind-altering states.

Searching for our place in the cosmos has a special impetus now because of the remarkable photographs from the Hubble telescope and other astronomical photographs. Aside from being beautiful and awe-inspiring, they show how we humans on "spaceship" Earth are infinitesimal particles in an incomprehensible vastness of countless galaxies and universes.

In these circumstances, if there is no all-powerful God overseeing our existence, then what is there, if anything? Even if there was the “Big Bang,” we wonder “What preceded that?” “How?” “Why?’ What preceded the building blocks of atomic particles, dark matter, and microbes, or that intense pack of energy that preceded that seminal explosion?

There are as yet no definitive answers to the existential questions from the sages of physics, mathematics, astronomy, philosophy , or other spheres of wisdom . The newly aloft James Watt Space Telescope, much more powerful than the Hubble, is now seeking answers to these questions of our origins.

Ironically, both religious and nonreligious people are allies in pursuing these answers. Spiritual experiences of wonder and awe open our minds to other possibilities that might exist within ourselves or in outer space. This wonderment enables new ideas, perceptions, and rationales in our existence.

A sense of believing (one of the Four B’s, along with being, belonging, and benevolence) is an important determinant in evaluating the worth of our lives. Beliefs might be in a God or religious tenets, or in codes of ethics , humanistic values, or benevolent interpersonal principles.

Understanding the meaning of life may be beyond our comprehension at present and may ultimately prove unachievable. But the fact that we have an unending human need to study these elusive mysteries—of our origins, our purpose, and our worth—defines us as human beings.

This inherent need propels us into space, the laboratory, new inventions and discoveries, creativity in all the arts, and, yes, into both religion and spirituality. We seek new ways of thinking about our spaceship Earth, about each other, and about the cosmos.

The search for meaning to our existence is a primal human need which should be cherished and nurtured. Our unique species is on a quest into the realms of the secular, the religious, and the spiritual. These enhance each other and are equally fundamental, profound, and exciting.

Saul Levine M.D. , is a professor emeritus at the University of California at San Diego.

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What's the Difference Between Religion and Spirituality?

Is Religion Organized Spirituality? Is Spirituality Personalized Religion?

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One popular idea is that there exists a distinction between two different modes of relating with the divine or the sacred: religion and spirituality. Religion describes the social, the public, and the organized means by which people relate to the sacred and the divine, while spirituality describes such relations when they occur in private, personally, and even in ways.

Is such a distinction valid?

In answering this questions, it's important to remember that it presumes to describe two fundamentally different types of things. Even though I describe them as different ways of relating to the divine or the sacred, that's already introducing my own prejudices into the discussion. Many (if not most) of those who attempt to draw such a distinction don't describe them as two aspects of the same thing; instead, they're supposed to be two completely different animals.

It's popular, especially in America, to completely separate between spirituality and religion. It's true that there are differences, but there are also a number of problematic distinctions which people try to make. In particular, supporters of spirituality often argue that everything bad lies with religion while everything good can be found in spirituality. This is a self-serving distinction which masks the nature of religion and spirituality.

Religion vs. Spirituality

One clue that there's something fishy about this distinction comes when we look at the radically different ways people try to define and describe that distinction. Consider these three definitions drawn from the internet:

• Religion is an institution established by man for various reasons. Exert control, instill morality, stroke egos, or whatever it does. Organized, structured religions all but remove god from the equation. You confess your sins to a clergy member, go to elaborate churches to worship, are told what to pray and when to pray it. All those factors remove you from god. Spirituality is born in a person and develops in the person. It may be kick started by a religion, or it may be kick started by a revelation. Spirituality extends to all facets of a person's life. Spirituality is chosen while religion is often times forced. Being spiritual to me is more important and better than being religious.
• Religion can be anything that the person practicing it desires. Spirituality, on the other hand, is defined by God. Since religion is man defined, religion is a manifestation of the flesh. But spirituality, as defined by God, is a manifestation of His nature.
• True spirituality is something that is found deep within oneself. It is your way of loving, accepting and relating to the world and people around you. It cannot be found in a church or by believing in a certain way.

These definitions aren't just different, they are incompatible! Two define spirituality in a way which makes it dependent upon the individual; it is something that develops in the person or is found deep within oneself. The other, however, defines spirituality as something which comes from God and is defined by God while religion is anything that the person desires. Is spirituality from God and religion from man, or is it the other way around? Why such divergent views?

Even worse, I've found the three above definitions copied onto numerous websites and blog posts in attempts to promote spirituality over religion. Those doing the copying ignore the source and disregard the fact that they are contradictory!

We can better understand why such incompatible definitions (each representative of how many, many others define the terms) appear by observing what unites them: the denigration of religion. Religion is bad. Religion is all about people controlling other people. Religion distances you from God and from the sacred. Spirituality, whatever it really is, is good. Spirituality is the true way to reach God and the sacred. Spirituality is the right thing to center your life on.

Problematic Distinctions Between Religion and Spirituality

One principal problem with attempts to separate religion from spirituality is that the former is saddled with everything negative while the latter is exalted with everything positive. This is a totally self-serving way of approaching the issue and something you only hear from those who describe themselves as spiritual. You never hear a self-professed religious person offer such definitions and it's disrespectful to religious people to suggest that they would remain in a system with no positive characteristics whatsoever.

Another problem with attempts to separate religion from spirituality is the curious fact that we don't see it outside America. Why are people in Europe either religious or irreligious but Americans have this third category called spiritual? Are Americans special? Or is it rather that distinction is really just a product of American culture?

In fact, that is exactly the case. The term itself came to be used frequently only after the 1960s, when there were widespread revolts against every form of organized authority, including organized religion. Every establishment and every system of authority was thought to be corrupt and evil, including those which were religious.

However, Americans weren't prepared to abandon religion entirely. Instead, they created a new category which was still religious, but which no longer included the same traditional authority figures.

They called it spirituality. Indeed, the creation of the category spiritual can be seen as just one more step in the long American process of privatizing and personalizing religion, something which has occurred constantly throughout American history.

It's no wonder that courts in the Americas have refused to acknowledge any substantive difference between religion and spirituality, concluding that spiritual programs are so much like religions that it would violate their rights to force people to attend them (as with Alcoholics Anonymous, for example). The religious beliefs of these spiritual groups do not necessarily lead people to the same conclusions as organized religions, but that doesn't make them less religious.

Valid Distinctions Between Religion and Spirituality

This is not to say that there is nothing at all valid in the concept of spirituality—just that the distinction between spirituality and religion in general is not valid. Spirituality is a form of religion, but a private and personal form of religion. Thus, the valid distinction is between spirituality and organized religion.

We can see this in how there is little (if anything) that people describe as characterizing spirituality but which has not also characterized aspects of traditional religion. Personal quests for God? Organized religions have made a great deal of room for such quests. Personal understandings of God? Organized religions have relied heavily upon the insights of mystics, although they have also sought to circumscribe their influence so as not to rock the boat too much and too quickly.

Moreover, some of the negative features commonly attributed to religion can also be found in so-called spiritual systems. Is religion dependent upon a book of rules? Alcoholics Anonymous describes itself as spiritual rather than religious and has such a book. Is religion dependent upon a set of written revelations from God rather than a personal communication? A Course in Miracles is a book of such revelations which people are expected to study and learn from.

It is important to note the fact that many of the negative things which people attribute to religions are, at best, features of some forms of some religions (usually Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), but not of other religions (like Taoism or Buddhism). This is perhaps why so much of spirituality remains attached to traditional religions , like attempts to soften their harder edges. Thus, we have Jewish spirituality, Christian spirituality, and Muslim spirituality.

Religion is spiritual and spirituality is religious. One tends to be more personal and private while the other tends to incorporate public rituals and organized doctrines. The lines between one and the other are not clear and distinct—they are all points on the spectrum of belief systems known as religion. Neither religion nor spirituality is better or worse than the other; people who try to pretend that such a difference does exist are only fooling themselves.

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Can you be spiritual without being religious? 'There are many paths to enlightenment'

What’s it like to lead a life that’s spiritual, but not traditionally religious? Answers vary, but perhaps not as wildly as one might expect.

A recent TODAY survey indicated that 77 percent of participants see a difference between religion and spirituality , with more than 70 percent of respondents indicating it’s more important to be spiritual than religious.

Perhaps among those who identify with that latter majority is Suzi Lula, who prays and expresses gratitude on a daily basis. Raised by a Jewish mother and Christian father, Lula says she found comfort in being raised with religious traditions, but discovered a deeper connection once she attended events through Culver City, California’s Agape International Spiritual Center .

“To me, spirituality is the best of what any religion is seeking to offer,” Lula told TODAY’s Erica Hill. “When I found Agape, it really felt more like a community where the spiritual essence that I was looking for was just infused.”

A transdenominational movement founded by Rev. Michael Beckwith in 1986 , Agape claims some 9,000 local members and 1 million “friends worldwide” — all on a quest to find deeper spirituality.

“I think that sometimes there's a misconception that spiritual people are airy-fairy,” he said. “I would say it's just the opposite: that a deeply spiritual person is trying to manifest their gifts and their talents in this world to change the world for the better.”

Discussions about God, acts of prayer, and an emphasis on service mirror elements of religion, but Agape doesn’t offer the traditional structure many Americans associate with religion.

“God is a presence that's never in absence,” Beckwith said. “This presence is everywhere, so, you would never pray for God to come here, because the presence of God is infinite.”

Rev. Linda Mercadante was raised in an interfaith, nonreligious home, but yearned for something more as a young adult. After her own spiritual journey, she found fulfillment in the structure of organized religion.

“When I just saw myself as spiritual, but not religious, I found it a little lonely, actually,” said Mercadante, now an ordained minister and a professor at the Methodist Theological School in Ohio . “There were things I had questions about but could not find the answers to.”

Mercadante has focused much of her research on people who classify themselves as spiritual, but not religious — a category that includes about 11 percent of Americans. “People do want to separate those two terms, [but] I think they're more harmonious than people realize,” she said.

For her research, Mercadante interviewed people of different races, ethnicities and socioeconomic backgrounds throughout North America. Perspectives on spirituality, she said, were remarkably similar.

“Often, what they didn’t like [about religion were] some aspects of the theology,” she said. “They felt that religion would require them to sign on the dotted line that would control their beliefs and their behavior.”

When TODAY asked Beckwith what might draw people to spirituality, Beckwith replied, “There's an old saying that religion is for people who don't want to go to hell, and spirituality is for people who have already been there. So, often times, people are on a spiritual path because they've had some very, very hard times. Religion hasn't provided an answer.”

The journey to find those kinds of answers, he added, is an essential component of spirituality.

“We're keenly aware that there are many paths to enlightenment, many paths to your sacred connection to the divine,” he said. “It doesn't have to be just one way.”

While there may be nuanced differences between spirituality and religion, Mercadante says a lot can be gleaned by those who identify more with one classification rather than the other.

“I really want organized religion to take spiritual people but not religious [people] seriously, and to appreciate their open minds,” she added. “And I hope spiritual but not religious people, with their open minds, can take seriously what organized religion has to offer them.”

Lula boiled her spirituality down to two components: “God is love,” and a quote attributed to the Dalai Lama: “My religion is kindness.”

Added Lula, “That, to me, says it all. Kindness, I think, comes from the inside out.”

Follow TODAY.com writer Chris Serico on Twitter .

Being “Spiritual But Not Religious” Carries Consequences

Q: I believe that I am a very spiritual person. I don’t personally believe in any religion, but that doesn’t mean I am not spiritual.

A: This is something I’ve heard quite a bit recently. I wonder where this idea comes from and if the people who say it realize the consequences. I have a feeling this inclination comes from dissatisfaction with religious people and their seeming hypocrisy. It is true that many people who claim to be Christian (even Christian leaders) struggle with sin and living an authentic Christian life. I think that those who are “spiritual but not religious” wrestle with this disparity. In a certain sense, that’s fair. We Christians should be better. And yet, there is something adolescent about demanding perfection from people.

There is a time in young people’s lives when they have a sense of right and wrong and they have to reconcile this with the reality that people are flawed. For example, Mom and Dad tell me how I should behave, but they don’t always live that way themselves. I see that they fail to live up to their own teachings, so I desire to rebel against them. The question: Can I find a true balance between justice (there is a right way to live and a wrong way to live) and mercy (being willing to forgive people when they live the wrong way)?

In order to grow past a mere adolescent faith, we must find the best way to reconcile justice and mercy. Can I understand that Mom’s and Dad’s teaching might be true even when they don’t always live it out? Can I grasp the reality that a person can truly believe in Jesus and still struggle to follow him completely?

…if I am merely spiritual, there are no demands upon me other than to follow my own sense of “this is what I currently prefer.”

But I think there is another adolescent thing going on in this claim. There is the desire of “I want to do what I want to do.” If I have religion, then I am obligated to obey someone else’s will. But if I am merely spiritual, there are no demands upon me other than to follow my own sense of “this is what I currently prefer.”

I’ve seen this mindset manifest itself with comments like, “Well, I find God the most in nature, so I would rather go into the woods on Sunday morning than to a church.” I also find God revealing himself in nature. But what is going on here? I am merely asserting my own preference: I want to go to the woods, so I will go to the woods. I don’t actually have to be concerned with what God might want. I’m not even asking if God has a preference regarding where he wants to be found or how he wants to be worshiped. I am merely doing what I want to do.

In this case, my “god” is me. I become the one who decides “this is what God would want,” rather than asking, “God, what do you want?”

“Spiritual but not religious” is just another form of idolatry. In this case, the false god is the god I have invented. God is no longer a someone. “God” is now just some vague idea, an impersonal force that makes no demands on me and is simply “there” so that I don’t feel lonely.

I will talk to people who say, “All I need to know is that God is love.” I believe that God is love as well. But where did they get that truth about God? They didn’t get it from looking at nature. If anything, nature is impartial. It can be beautiful, but it can also be ugly. It can bring life, but it just as easily brings death. There is nothing in nature alone that indicates that God is love. Nature doesn’t seem to even care about human beings.

We have been told that God is love through the revelation of Jesus Christ. No person on this planet had even hoped that God is love until Christianity. There was no proof of this until God became one of us and revealed himself in this way. The only way Jesus could accurately reveal this truth is if he himself is truly God. And if Jesus is God, then that means that God is not impersonal, he is not invented by us; he is revealed to us. Our spirituality has been formed and informed by our religion.

…there is a being in this universe who is spiritual but not religious. Satan, being a fallen angel, is a pure spirit.

To claim to be spiritual but not religious is like saying, “I’m a scholar, but I don’t read.” What informs your scholarship? There needs to be content. Where would a spiritual person get data about the spiritual life? How would they even know the answers to the most basic questions: Is your spirit good? Is God good? Who is God? Is God on your side? Who are you? What is the goal of living?

On a semi-light/semi-serious note, there is a being in this universe who is spiritual but not religious. Satan, being a fallen angel, is a pure spirit. There are no creatures more spiritual than Satan. So being spiritual doesn’t necessarily put us on the team we want to be on.

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Religious but Not Spiritual

Gregory wolfe | issue 68.

F OR A NUMBER OF YEARS I’ve been saving up the fiction of Anthony Trollope as a sort of mid-life treat. At least I hoped it would be a treat. Trollope is the kind of author who is often ridiculed as a literary lightweight: a Victorian lacking the range and energy of Dickens; a drawing-room chronicler without Jane Austen’s tart irony or powers of observation. Even as I turned to the first page I was braced for disappointment.

So far I can report that Trollope—for all his gentle romantic farce and clerical satire—stands up quite well as a distinctive literary voice, capable of striking deep social and political resonances upon the gossamer strings of his comedy. While the pages go down easily, Trollope is not merely a fashioner of escapist fluff but a writer who summons issues as profound as those his more earnest contemporaries wrestled with.

I began with The Warden, the first in a sequence known as The Chronicles of Barsetshire (which includes most famously Barchester Towers ). The title refers to the novel’s protagonist, the Reverend Septimus Harding, a clergyman nearing sixty who lives in a sleepy English shire where time seems to pass more slowly than in the great metropolis of London. No one in the town of Barchester is more happily attuned to this timelessness and obscurity than the good reverend. But to his horror he suddenly finds himself at the center of national attention.

As precentor of Barchester Cathedral, Harding is also given the wardenship of Hiram’s Hospital, an almshouse for elderly or disabled working men. Like many such institutions, this almshouse was founded by a local worthy in the Middle Ages. The income from the donated properties has increased substantially over the centuries and is largely given to the warden. Thanks to the efforts of a well-intentioned, young, reform-minded doctor, John Bold (who happens to be in love with Harding’s daughter), the reverend Harding and Hiram’s Hospital become a cause célèbre, the subject of newspaper articles about social inequality and the power of the Church of England.

On one level The Warden is about the human toll inflicted on good people by crusading reformers intent on winning points on the political stage. The Reverend Harding, while never particularly guilty about the eight hundred pounds he received as warden, sees the point of the critique. Because Trollope always wanted to depict his characters as mixtures of good and bad he shows us a man who resigns his position (against the wishes of his clerical colleagues) as much because of an aversion to publicity as from a newly awakened conscience about social justice.

But if that was all the book was about I don’t think The Warden would be as beloved as it is. What makes the story special is that while Harding’s weaknesses are clear—he is an excessively shy, retiring person who may not act or think for himself as he should—nonetheless, he participates in an ancient, organic union of faith and community that stretches back into the medieval world that produced Hiram’s Hospital.

Trollope takes care to give the Reverend Harding a highly specific role within the church: he is a liturgist and choirmaster. Early in the novel we are given an economical introduction to Harding’s passions:

Mr. Harding’s warmest admirers cannot say that he was ever an industrious man; the circumstances of his life have not called on him to be so; and yet he can hardly be called an idler. Since his appointment to his precentorship, he has published, with all possible additions of vellum, typography, and gilding, a collection of our ancient church music, with some correct dissertations on Purcell, Crotch, and Nares. He has greatly improved the choir of Barchester, which, under his dominion, now rivals that of any cathedral in England. He has taken something more than his fair share in the cathedral services, and has played the violoncello daily to such audiences as he could collect, or, faute de mieux, to no audience at all.

The small touches here are delightful—and telling. That book of ancient church music is published so beautifully, it turns out, at Harding’s personal expense, much to the exasperation of his son-in-law, the Reverend Theophilus Grantly, the officious and money-conscious archdeacon of Barchester Cathedral. It is perhaps the warden’s only extravagance but it is clearly an extravagance of love and a celebration of beauty. Harding’s passion for the cello, which later in the novel is described as “that saddest of instruments,” is manifest whenever he is emotionally overwrought; at such times he is given to silently “bowing” a passage of music, much to the consternation of his interlocutors.

Harding’s faith is played out in the minutiae of liturgy and music rather than the grand thoughts of preaching and theological exposition. His other gift is simply that of friendship. Significantly, his two deepest relationships are with the bishop and the de facto leader of the Hiram’s Hospital community, a simple old soul named Bunce—two men who represent the top and bottom of the social order. Harding and his bishop love to spend companionable evenings by the fire. As for Bunce: “The precentor delighted to call him his sub-warden, and was not ashamed, occasionally, when no other guest was there, to bid him sit down by the same parlor fire, and drink the full glass of port which was placed near him. Bunce never went without the second glass, but no entreaty ever made him take a third.”

Trollope’s observations about his characters are generous but rarely sentimental, as that small detail of class consciousness (“when no other guest was there”) makes clear. Septimus Harding lives in what essentially remains a feudal world, and if that dispensation is both static and guilty of certain inequities, the new world of the reformers has little of its warmth and humanity, its rootedness in a historic community.

The high-minded idealism of activists like John Bold, for all its rhetoric of compassion and equality, does not grow out of direct contact with the poor. Its motives are thoroughly mixed. Good intentions shade into personal vanity; lofty (if vague) goals for the reform of allegedly corrupt institutions are quickly exploited by newspapers that profit from controversy. Neither the reformers nor the media have any real stake in the ongoing life of this community.

And a bewildered Septimus Harding is reduced to playing melancholy notes on his air-cello.

I read The Warden at a time when I was reflecting on the now ubiquitous contemporary phrase: “I’m spiritual but not religious.” I asked a friend about this phrase and he replied: “Many associate the word ‘religious’ with fanaticism, irrationality, intolerance, and closed-mindedness, while ‘spirituality’ suggests something more detached, thoughtful, tolerant, and open.” The “binding” ( re-ligare ) of religion is seen as overly constrictive.

No doubt this is an accurate assessment of a widespread feeling. And yet—call me contrary or misguided if you will—the Reverend Harding makes me think that I’m religious but not spiritual.

Communities, like families, can be healthy or toxic, but western individualism provides no true alternative. Ironically, the spiritual-but-not-religious embrace a consumerist mentality that in other contexts they harshly criticize. The irony is compounded when one realizes that these spiritual individualists—inheritors of an “I” culture—most often pluck items off the shelf of “we” cultures. Spiritual tourism offers the benefits of wisdom derived from those who submit to authority and discipline and tradition without having to do so oneself.

But spiritual tourists have no home to return to; they are always restlessly consuming new experiences. They can’t eat, pray, and love enough.

At the level of popular culture the tremendous longing we feel for the integrated life of a “we” culture is overwhelmingly clear. Take a film like Avatar, which presents us with a thinly veiled allegory of rapacious consumerism confronted by a seemingly primitive tribal culture that is grounded in taboos, strict social roles, and corporate worship. The bulldozers that plow through the jungle seek to rip out a precious piece of the whole and turn it into a commodity.

The mid-twentieth-century theologian Romano Guardini noted that his conversion experience began with the spiritual desire to “lose his life in order to find it.” At that moment he ran into a dilemma:

To give my soul away—but to whom? Who is in the position to require it from me? So to require it that, in the requiring, it would not again be I who lay hold of it? Not simply “God.” For whenever a person wants to deal only with God, then he says “God” but means himself. There must also be an objective authority, which can draw out my answer from self-assertion’s every refuge and hideout. But there is only one such entity: the…church in her authority and concreteness. The question of holding on or letting go is decided ultimately not before God, but before the church.

The word authority is another contemporary bugbear, I know, but in the end, authority as Guardini sees it is less about someone handing down judgments from on high upon hapless members and more about the force that compels us to stick together. God knows just how hard and messy that sticking can be.

How, I wonder, is it possible to learn tolerance outside of a community?

The older I get the more suspicious I am of spirituality as something ethereal, exotic, and otherworldly—something found elsewhere. The poet William Carlos Williams coined the phrase “No ideas but in things” to express a poetic that preferred concreteness to abstraction. By the same token, I know of no spirituality outside the relationships that constitute the daily life of my community.

This is where Trollope’s genius lies in The Warden . For in making Septimus Harding a liturgist he emphasizes that the quintessential activity of a religious community is not the purveying of doctrines and ideas but the worship of the presence that has called the community into being. In common prayer and song we lay aside the burden of self-consciousness; we recount the story of the encounter that brought us together. In worship we become participants, living members of a body, rather than observers and connoisseurs.

Liturgy is where art and community life meet. Where spirit is not thought but made flesh through hands, knees, and vocal chords. In worship the stuff of art is offered up in the name of the community, not the ego of the artist—or the clergy. Ingmar Bergman, one of the great film directors and an artist capable of rendering dysfunctional religious communities with unrelenting, devastating accuracy, nonetheless wrote late in his life: “Art lost its basic creative drive the moment it was separated from worship. It severed an umbilical cord and now lives its own sterile life, generating and degenerating itself. In former days the artist remained unknown and his work was to the glory of God.”

After Septimus Harding resigns his wardenship of Hiram’s Hospital he is assigned to the tiny church of Saint Cuthbert, “no bigger than an ordinary room.” “Here he performs afternoon service every Sunday, and administers the sacrament once in every three months. His audience is not large…but enough come to fill his six pews, and on the front seat of those devoted to the poor is always to be seen our old friend Mr. Bunce, decently arrayed in his bedesman’s gown.”

My kind of place.

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Tags: Anthony Trollope art and faith authority community editorial statement Gregory Wolfe religion spirituality

My position on this essay:

When a Christian believer refers to being spiritual solely based on Scripture (disregarding any tradition of the church whatsoever), it should be regarded: “not one´s spirit, but being spiritual”. An individual with or led by the power of the Holy Spirit here on earth and in the spiritual realms (immaterial, spiritual reality, unseen by human eyes). Even demons and angels are referred as spiritual beings, so it is good to say that a Christian is a spiritual individual and considers (views) things in a spiritual manner.

Read 1 Co 2:13–3:2.

But please bear in mind that the expression “spiritual realm” doesn´t mean mystical but it refers to a different metaphysical level, dimension, extent, dominion, region, range, extent, and place. That doesn´t mean at all that the spiritual realm is all mystical and figurative, but it could be very well be SPIRITUAL today and PHYSICAL, actual, straightforward, bodily, perceptual, substantial, LITERAL and real once it is fulfilled and revealed such as the apocalyptic promises and the coming kingdom on this earth since we were made this way, in the image and likeness of God, physical, corporal, tangible, straightforward, and literal.

As opposed to the word “religious” (deisidaimōn, thrēskos) found in Acts 17:22 and James 1:26, which is being used in a very critical, opposite, and worldly sense; the word and theme “spiritual” as being referred to an individual is openly and several times (spiritual drink, spiritual death, spiritual food, powers, songs, things, gifts) used by Paul in the NT.

Although not clearly stated in this Essay (which is erroneous), I think part of the point of this somewhat humanistic essay “Religious but Not Spiritual” is being made simply on the cultural context of the use of the words today.

Even if, nowadays, the word “spiritual” is focused on “I” and the word “religious” is focused on “we”, for Christians, it should be considered evangelicalism, the Protestant reformation, and “the solas” as a midpoint between the tradition of the church and an individual´s faith an access to God.

In a scriptural context and for a Christian believer it´s okay to use and to be “spiritual”, and not good when simply disregarded.

DBL Greek : “4461 πνευματικός (pneumatikos), ή (ē), όν (on): adj. [see πνευματικός (pneumatikos), οῦ (ou), ὁ (ho), just above]; ≡ Str 4152; TDNT 6.332—1. LN 12.21 from the Spirit, pertaining to the Spirit (1Co 2:13ab; 12:1); 2. LN 26.10 spiritual (Eph 1:3; Mk 16:15 v.r.; 1Co 12:9 v.r.); 3. LN 41.40 of spiritual conduct, a pattern of life controlled by spirit (1Co 3:1); 4. LN 79.3 not physical, not material (1Co 15:44); 5. LN 79.6 supernatural, with God as the source (1Co 10:4); 6. LN 12.44 supernatural powers (Eph 6:12) ”

(1) Logos Bible Software (2) Swanson, James. Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains: Greek (New Testament). Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997.

This was a refreshing essay. Thank you:)

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