The "spiritual but not religious" debate

Who was it who said: "Why go away mad, when you can just go away?"
From what I've seen, many people who have left are very angry and just want to take out their anger on someone. Clergy are particularly attractive targets for them. Apparently one of two things happens.They become reconciled. Or, the anger eventually burns itself out and apathy to religion sets in.
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If Rev. Dr. Victoria Weinstein finds herself on the receiving end of "a dumping of grievances" it is most probably because she quite regularly goes out of her way to insult and otherwise verbally abuse people on her Peacebang blogs, hence her public defense of Rev. Lillian Daniel's comparatively mild and good humored "snark". I guess I cannot repeat the vulgarities and slurs that Peacebang has flung at people over the years since we are asked to avoid vulgarities and slurs here. To its shame the Unitarian Universalist Association has all but officially approved of Peacebang's insulting and defamatory attacks on people and groups which BTW include the Roman Catholic Church, a favorite target of Unitarian Universalist ministers who seem to relish criticizing the RC church over clergy sexual abuse while pointedly ignoring, and even covering up and hiding, the Unitarian Universalists church's own shameful record of negligent and complicit responses to clergy misconduct of all kinds. . .

A link to this article is also found in America magazine online in "The Good Word" blogs and has generated several comments.

http://www.americamagazine.org/blog/entry.cfm?blog_id=1&entry_id=4538

Many believe that organized religion in general has forgotten all about spirit and spirituality, especially many former Catholics. It has become a church reduced to rules and regulations. And it is bringing back more of them (no meat on Fridays in England and Wales). The hierarchy doesn't clean up its own messes and tragedies, but spend lots of time "pontificating" about evil politicians. It laments the state of the economy and the financial state of the church, closes parishes and schools without consulting those impacted, yet most still live in luxury in mansions, staffed with servants, decorated with original art and expensive persian rugs, etc. Maybe they should sell a mansion, and a few of the luxuries, and save a parish or an inner city school.

Church officialdom spends enormous amounts of energy and effort for years to have a "new" translation of the mass prayers that make little sense to native English speakers, but totally ignores doing anything meaningful that would hold bishops accountable for allowing priests to rape kids - all the guidelines and new regulations impact mostly lay staff and volunteers and leaves alone those who enabled child molesters to molest and rape tens of thousands of kids.

Who needs it?

Well I personally don't know anybody who self identifies as "spiritual but not religious", but I can tell that it's a sufficiently vague definition to cover a wide range of motivations and beliefs. It's another case where generalisation is not going to get you very far at all.

Nobody speaks for the Almighty. Not some imbecile of a Fundamentalist minister, nor some arrogant Catholic Cardinal in his red silk, nor any man or woman. God cannot be put in a box. God does not do what man tells God to do. God in in the sunset and in nature, and in everything. People are spiritual but not religious, quite often because they see so called "religious" people who love to sit in judgement of others, as if they themselves had some special in with God. They don't. To see people like Marcial Maciel, Jimmy Swaggert, Jim Bakker, etc, claim to speak for God is enough to make a sensible person vomit. Frankly, I see Christ in the face of the average homeless person, more than in the face of the average Bishop.

When a religion decides to define itself by its dogmas, doctrines, rules, and traditions, it risks becoming "not spiritual but religious." This is the point, I think, of the "spiritual but not religious" folks. Vatican nobles, are you listening?

Mystics, Shallow; Pewsitters, Deep? Methinks you got it reversed. As Meister Eckhardt said, if Spiritual life is a journey, it's a millimeter long and seven miles DEEP. Religionists find security in the rules and regulations, in the empty rituals; that's deep??

I can't see why one would automatically associate someone who claims "I'm spiritual but not religious" needing healing.
The words "boring and abused" doesn't seem to fit in either, more like spiritual pride.

I am a spiritual director. Tonight as I was closing my office, I met a man who asked me what I did. I explained I joined people on their faith journey. I told him that some people are involved in church the traditional ways and others consider themselves "spiritual, but not religious." Many of the "spirituals" wish to have companions on the journey and spiritual direction offers them that companionship. Some clients return to the traditional church and others continue their journey on their own their own terms. I journey with them with no expectations towards an outcome. We talked for a few more minutes.

As the man and I parted he said, "Maybe you can use this with the people you see - Religion is for men afraid of hell and spirituality is for people who have been through hell. I've been through hell." He considered himself spiritual and no longer Orthodox. That's where he is at on his journey. God is with him on his journey and loves him.

Personally, I believe in my Church and love it despite its human frailties.

By the way, I asked the man to come back and talk. I hope he will.

The 'not religious, but spiritual' response to formal religion leads to, in my view, three major problems:

1: It ushers in an inclusivist approach to truth, whereby all 'spiritual' truths claims are grounded in non-testable self-authentication. It sees, like some form of monistic mysticism, all religious truth as true. This seems to me to do violence to the very notion of what truth is..

2: It divorces belief from community and ethics. The inner turn is away from the worldly - and often cedes the world of material concerns to those without ethical concerns. Non-rooted spirituality, despite its fetish for asserting authenticity via ancient wisdom, is too short on ethical challenge and injunction..

3: It allows us to perpetuate beliefs in life-after-death without judgement -it distracts us from mortality without substantial existential engagement forced on us by atheism - or by the best of religious traditions themselves: it is neither, and lets us off..But the lurking anxiety and dread of death is never dealt with...

These (and see http://dispirirted.org for more..) are part of why I have such a problem with "non-religious spirituality"...

The 'not religious, but spiritual' response to formal religion leads to, in my view, three major problems:

1: It ushers in an inclusivist approach to truth, whereby all 'spiritual' truths claims are grounded in non-testable self-authentication. It sees, like some form of monistic mysticism, all religious truth as true. This seems to me to do violence to the very notion of what truth is..

2: It divorces belief from community and ethics. The inner turn is away from the worldly - and often cedes the world of material concerns to those without ethical concerns. Non-rooted spirituality, despite its fetish for asserting authenticity via ancient wisdom, is too short on ethical challenge and injunction..

3: It allows us to perpetuate beliefs in life-after-death without judgement -it distracts us from mortality without substantial existential engagement forced on us by atheism - or by the best of religious traditions themselves: it is neither, and lets us off..But the lurking anxiety and dread of death is never dealt with...

These (and see http://dispirirted.org for more..) are part of why I have such a problem with "non-religious spirituality"...