Spirituality and religion

From time to time I read statements to the effect that people are interested in spirituality rather than religion, or they say that they are spiritual but not religious.

I’m never sure what they mean when they say such things, but recently Cori posted something on her blog that made me think I ought to try to clarify my unclarity: Cori’s Blog: Parting ways with Emerging:

I’ve been interested to follow the conversation on Steve Hayes and Cobus van Wyngaard’s blogs around the emerging conversation in South Africa. Something Steve wrote here, and more specifically what Matt Stone said in a comment to this post made me realise where I may part ways with the emerging conversation. Steve wrote that one of the streams of the emerging conversation was ‘those looking for spirituality rather than religion’. Matt’s comment to this was: ‘And those looking for ’spirituality’ versus religion tend to bow out of Christianity altogether or go for some sort of split-level syncretism. That’s not to say we’re not interested in mysticism, many are, but we wouldn’t see that as making up a distinct stream.’

Cori goes on to say that since she became involved in Ignatian spirituality she felt less part of the emerging conversation and that it had less to say to her.

My problem is that I find words like “spirituality” and “religion” slippery and difficult to grasp. They are used by people in many different ways, and I often use them myself, though I find myself trying to avoid using the term “spirituality” as far as possible.

The concept of “religion” is very much bound up with modernity. In his book Peter Harrison (1990:39) says:

The modern expression ‘the religions’ found its way into English vocabulary at about the same time as ‘religion’. The earliest occurrence is Hooker’s Laws of Eccelsiastical Politie (1593), where we find the following usage: ‘The Church of Rome, they say… did almost out of all religions take whatsoever had any fair and gorgeous show.’ With the publication, twenty years later, of the first edition of Edward Brerewood’s Enquiries Touching the Diversity of Languages and Religions through the Chief Parts of the World, the plural expression entered common usage. In his preface, Brerwood {sic} explains that there are ‘four sorts of Sects of Religion’ – Christianity, Mahometanism, Judaism and paganism, making it clear that these ‘religions’ are species of the generic ‘religion’. This fourfold classification of religion was to hold till the end of the century.

Thus “religions” came to be seen as part of a wider generic phenomenon “religion”. This is useful as far as it goes, and at times it is useful to speak in those terms, but that is not the only way of speaking about them. In the 20th century the Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about the need for “religionless Christianity”. Over the years this notion has been disseminated and diffused until it has become a cliche, “Christianity is not a religion but a relationship”, to be trotted out on all sorts of appropriate and inappropriate occasions.

The problem with the Enlightenment understanding of the term is that it made it possible to distinguish religion as a phenomenon different from non-religious phenomenon, and thus to distinguish between the s “sacred” and the “secular”, the former being the province of “religion”, and the latter not.

This made it possible to see “religion” as a “private” affair, having nothing to do with public life.

“Spirituality” has much the same effect. It originated in the Western Middle Ages, when bishops were often secular rulers, and feudal vassals of kings and dukes. So when a man became a bishop he was consecrated by other bishops, and then was invested with the temporalities and spiritualities of his office. The “temporalities” were the secular aspects of the office, while the “spiritualities” were the “sacred” aspects of the office.

“Temporal”, and “secular” have related meanings. “Temporal” means related to time rather than eternity, what is fleeting and passing rather than what is eternal. And “secular” means related to this age rather than to the age to come.

So both “religion” and “spirituality” are rooted in the idea of a separation  of the “sacred” from the “secular”, and of a gulf between them.

The way many people speak of “spirituality” also gives the impression that they think of it as somehow “spooky”, or at other times as a kind of style of being religious. A Roman Catholic academic friend once wrote to me of a fellow Roman Catholic, who was very much involved in the charismatic movement that he was “put off by his somewhat jaunty spirituality”.

The Orthodox Church also seems to have an attraction for certain kinds of Western Christians who are interested in “spirituality”, and very often they are among those who speak of it as if it were something “spooky”

Father Alexander Schmemann was wary of such people, and often wrote of the dangers of “religion” and “spirituality”. For example:

The church is not a religious establishment, but the
presence in the world of a saved world. But so often the church is entangled in problems that in faith are nonexistent and harmful. ‘Spirituality,’ ‘churchiness’ — dangerous and ambiguous concepts. So often many people whom I know as seekers of spirituality were narrow-minded, intolerant and dull, joyless, quite often accusing others of not being spiritual enough. They were often the center of their conscience, not Christ, not the Gospel, not God. In their presence, one does not bloom; just the opposite, one crouches. Pride, egocentricity, self-satisfaction and narrow-mindedness; but then, what is the use of spirituality? One will say to me that this is not genuine spirituality, that it is pseudo-spirituality. But where is true spirituality to be found? — Maybe in the desert or in lonely monastic cells. Yet the spirituality found in the church somehow frightens me. There is nothing worse than professional religiosity. All this fingering of a rosary in the midst of church gossip, the whole style of sighs and lowered eyes, seems too often terribly fake (Schmemann 2000:32).

for more on this topic see Religion and spirituality.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Harrison, Peter. 1990. “Religion” and the religions in the English Enlightenment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN: 0-521-38530-X, Dewey: 291.0942.

Schmemann, Alexander. 2000. The journals of Father Alexander Schmemann 1973-1983. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press. ISBN: 0-88141-200-7 Dewey: 281.9092