Spiritual But Not Religious

The "Nones," who self-identify with no organized religion, are now the largest "religious" grouping in the USA, at 28% outnumbering Catholics 23% and Evangelicals 24%. Many, but not all, describe themselves as "spiritual but not religious." 

Religion and Spirituality

Religion and spirituality are close to being synonymous but the sharp contrast is clarified by the etymology of "religion." It derives from the Latin religio meaning bond, reverence and obligation. And so it is clear that spirituality as opposed to religion is individual, subjective, isolated and adverse to bonds of loyalty, responsibility, gratitude. These are bonds with others in a faith, a tradition, a culture; they are bonds as well, in reverence, with ancestors and descendants. They entail practical, concrete, physical practices and things: worship, meetings, singing, works, laws, obligations, and entire social systems. Spirituality like religion is a network of beliefs, values, practices, and style but it flees the concrete, corporeal, communal, historical and institutional details of a share religion.

Alcoholics Anonymous and the 12 Steps

The best face of "spiritual but not religious" is the 12-step tradition of AA. This emerged out of Evangelical Christianity, but very early it detached from that association in order to welcome others, especially Catholics, who at that time would not associate with a Protestant-based group. More broadly, it wanted to welcome all alcoholics, including ex-Evangelicals, atheists, and in principle anyone identifying as an addict, regardless of religious belief. 

Paradoxically, it is based upon "belief in a higher power" but the nature of that is left undefined so that, for example, one might surrender to the program itself as "higher power." A sound theological intuition informs the entire program as they say of God only: "There is one; it is not me."

Paradoxically also, while it detaches from any religion, it is itself religious, not merely spiritual, in that it is deeply communal, concrete, and ritualized in a tight, dense network of practices and beliefs: defined literature, structured meetings, sponsorship, shared (serenity) prayer, strong sense of authority and tradition, a prolonged itinerary of recovery into sobriety, and a clearly defined culture. This is not individualized spirituality, but communal religion. But as it focuses clearly, exclusively on recovery from compulsion, it is compatible with any religion. In fact, in my own view it works best in just such conjunction.

Christian, Just Christian, No Denomination

A similar phenomena in Evangelical Christianity is the identification of oneself as "Christian" without association with a tradition, denomination, or body of theology. This is anti-intellectual, fideistic and subjective: it assumes an obvious "Christianity," (usually involving salvation by faith in Christ alone and a self-evident meaning to Scripture) without the mediation of a specific historical, theological community. Every such believer draws, of course, from some tradition, but is unaware of such, and so operates in an individualism systematically dismissive of tradition, history, authority, and the sacramental.

A-Historic

And so the spiritual-not-religious and the just-Christian both live a-historically, in a present before a revelation that is not related to past, tradition and authority or a future trajectory. This is a "presentism" that lives in the moment, without organic attachment to past and future, rootless regarding the past and sterile looking into the future. It coexists nicely with a "progressivism" that trusts in a messianic science as it disparages an ignorant, superstitious past.

Anti-Communal

This areligious spirituality is allergic to the annoyances, inconveniences of community and other people. It righteously judges institutions as hypocritical (not to say that they are not; but aren't we all?) and thus elevates the Sovereign Self over the moral failings of the religious. It enjoys detachment from obligation, gratitude and dependency in order to indulge personal preferences: the beauties of nature, art, therapeutic introversion, health and wholeness. The Nones are not noteworthy for their engagement with the poor, suffering and marginalized.

Pantheistic

Allergic to "patriarchy" viewed as toxic, the trend is away from the Fatherhood of God (the theism of Judaism, Christianity and Islam) towards pantheistic pieties which locate the divine in Mother Nature and in the Jungian Self. There is compassion for the suffering, heightened awareness of communion with Nature and the impersonal, triumph of the therapeutic, emergence of the narcissistic, obsession with health and "wholeness." With the loss of transcendence, the supernatural, and the holy, the religious sense of the sacred is directed, not to heaven, but to earthly realities of injustice, environmentalism, and personal fulfillment. Spirituality draws now heavily from therapy and Eastern traditions of Yoga and Zen which aspire to elude human suffering without the Cross of Jesus Christ.

Disincarnate

With the loss of the transcendent and the supernatural, the physical is no longer iconic or sacramental: earthy manifestations of the heavenly. There is no God to incarnate since he is not transcendent but already imminent to the natural. There is no body/soul unity as the subjective self is detached from a body that is bereft of form, logos and a nature and so is vulnerable to "choice" and technological engineering.

Catholic Contrary

By sharpest contrast, Catholicism is the most "religious" in the etymological sense of bond, loyalty, obligation, reverence. It is an immensely rich symphony of icons, sacraments and sacramentals, practices, relics, authority, Tradition and traditions, liturgy, piety, processions and pilgrimages, miracles, laws, hierarchies, orders and renewal movements...all communal, corporeal, historic...rooted in the past and moving into the future...bonding us to each other...our ancestors and descendants...saints and sinners...all in the Eternal Word, become flesh...in Jesus born, living, crucified, risen, ascended, Spirit-sending, and to return...and in the Eucharist, so quiet here in our midst.