SPIRITUAL OR RELIGIOUS? [M, 7-13-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—SPIRITUAL OR RELIGIOUS? [M, 7-13-26]

 

According to a Pew research study, about 10% of Americans are religious but not spiritual. They like religious stuff, but not God stuff. They like chanting liturgies and sprinkling water on babies. They like wearing yarmulkas and crosses and hijabs and turbans. They enjoy religious music. They like kneeling in the right way at the right times.

But they don’t care about prayer and heaven and hell and eternal life and that soul stuff. They don’t need a relationship with God to enjoy talk and activities about God. They are in the religion, but not of the religion. Who needs a “higher power?” [Well, alcoholics, but that’s different.]

This, of course, is the opposite of the tiresome, “I’m spiritual but not religious,” which is mostly what people use to excuse their absence from church or synagogue or temple. Until they want said venues for a wedding or funeral. Free, of course.

Despite my snarkiness, I understand why people want to be spiritual without being religious, and also why they want to be religious without being spiritual. I suspect most people live in one or the other of those categories a lot of the time, often without knowing it.

I see this especially in my retired clergy colleagues. Some drop out of the church altogether. They’ve handled holy things too long. They’ve learned that most Christians aren’t. They wonder why they ever bothered.

Others, often of the conservative or evangelical variety, become Episcopalians, or even Catholics. They’ve trusted in feelings, getting worked up, but those feelings wane with overuse. Now they’re tired. Now they feel more comfortable if they hold a prayer book that is responsible for producing the prayers and words and auras.

Psychologists tell us that as we age, we become more like ourselves. Which is why old people are often described as “set in our ways.” As I age, I find myself being the same as I have always been spiritually, but less religious. By that, I mean that I have always known the Presence of God in the same way that I do now.

I’m a bit reluctant to say “the same way that I do now,” because it reminds me of the old man giving his testimony in church and saying, “When I was just a boy, the Lord filled my cup to the brim, and He hasn’t taken a drop out or put a drop in since then.” Some kid in the pews said, “It must have wiggletails in it by now, then.” [I’m assuming you’re old enough to understand about wiggletails.]

But I have become less religious, meaning I don’t use the tokens of religion as much as I used to. I still like them—the stoles and books and candles—but I feel no loss without them. They are a help in coming into the Presence, but the Presence does not depend on them.

I suspect that the right blend for old age is both—being religious without being spiritual, and being spiritual without being religious. When I get old, I suppose I’ll find out for sure.

John Robert McFarland