Sermons

January 4, 2009
Spiritual, But Not Religious

Spiritual, But Not Religious
a sermon by the Rev. Mark Worth

READINGS:
1. From the Rev. John Haynes Holmes (1879-1964), Essay in The Beacon Song and Service Book, 1935:
"When I am in the thinking mood, I try to be rigorously rational, and thus not to go one step farther in my thoughts and language than reason can take me. I then become uncertain as to whether I or any man can assert much about God... When, however, in preaching or prayer, in some high moment of inner communion or of profound experience with life among my fellows... I find it easy to speak as the poets speak, and cry, as so many of them cry, to God.
But when I say 'God,' it is poetry and not theology. Nothing that any theologian ever wrote about God has helped me much, but everything that the poets have written about flowers, and birds, and skies, and seas, and the saviors of the race, and God – whoever He may be – has at one time or another reached my soul! More and more, as I grow older, I live in the lovely thought of these seers and prophets. The theologians gather dust upon the shelves of my library, but the poets are stained with my fingers and blotted with my tears. I never seem so near truth as when I care not what I think or believe, but only that these masters of inner vision would live forever."

2. From H. L. Mencken (1880-1956):
"We must respect the other fellow’s religion, but only in the same sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children are smart."

THE SERMON
A couple came to me to see if I would preside at their wedding, and they wanted to know what would be said in the ceremony. “We are spiritual, but not religious,” they told me. They do not attend any church but consider themselves to be spiritual seekers. I heard their statement about religion and spirituality as a concern that we not use traditional Christian theological language in the wedding ceremony. I assured them that we could design a ceremony that both they and I would be comfortable with. “There is no single way to do a Unitarian Universalist wedding ceremony,” I told them. “I always provide couples with choices. A lot of people tell me they are ‘spiritual but not religious.’ I’m fine with that. In fact, that’s what I do,” I said. And we were able to plan a service they were both very happy with.
Last Sunday, Kent Price shared a reading by author Joan Borysenko, who says that she belongs to that large part of the American public “who identify themselves as spiritual rather than religious.” She said that her spirituality is “deeply inclusive,” and that it “centers on the heart teachings of all religions, which is compassionate action.” Borysenko wrote of her core Jewish values, which include “tikkun olam,” often translated as “restoring the world,” and which she interpreted as “creating a civilization with a heart.” She asked the profound question, “How can a global civilization with a heart be created?”
Professor of Religion John David Dawson of Haverford College writes that several years ago he began teaching a class in “Introduction to Christian Thought” by inviting the students to reflect on the nature of religion. As soon as he began the conversation about the nature of religion, one of the students volunteered, “I think of myself as a spiritual person, but I don’t have anything to do with religion.” Almost the entire class nodded in approval.
Prof. Dawson was prepared to discuss Christian theology. His students wrote “analytical, historically informed senior theses on Starhawk, the Wiccan movement, Wendell Berry, Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics, and the mindfulness of Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh.” Dawson says that these interests marked his students as “spiritual, but not religious.” They represent that one-fifth of the U.S. population that has no formal relationship with a church or synagogue but is nonetheless engaged in spiritual seeking.
Robert C. Fuller, a professor of religious studies at Bradley University, is the author of a book titled, Spiritual, But Not Religious. He writes, “This phrase probably means different things to different people. The confusion stems from the fact that the words ‘spiritual’ and ‘religious’ are really synonyms. Both connote belief in a Higher Power of some kind. Both also imply a desire to connect, or enter into a more intense relationship, with this Higher Power. And finally, both connote an interest in rituals, practices, and daily moral behaviors that foster such a connection or relationship.”

What do we mean by “religious” and “spiritual”?
There is no agreement about the meaning of “religious” and “spiritual.” The confusion between these words has less to do with definitions, and more to do with the way we have come to use these words. While they once meant roughly the same things, today we tend to associate the word “spiritual” with the private realm of thought and experience, and “religious” with the public realm of participation in a religious community, participation in the rituals of that community, and adherence to denominational doctrines.
People tend to be religious within religious communities. People tend to be spiritual by themselves; and individual spirituality is as different as individuals are from one another.
How do we tell the difference between “religious” and “spiritual”? Fuller says that a group of social scientists studied 346 people representing a wide range of religious backgrounds in an attempt to answer that question. The study group associated “religiousness” with higher levels of interest in church attendance and commitment to orthodox beliefs. “Spirituality” was associated with higher levels of interest in mysticism, experimentation with unorthodox beliefs and practices, and negative feelings toward both clergy and churches. The “spiritual but not religious” group was less likely to value religiousness positively, less likely to attend church or engage in prayer, less likely to engage in group experiences related to spiritual growth, more likely to be agnostic, more likely to hold nontraditional beliefs, and more likely to have had mystical experiences. Many have had negative experiences with churches or church leaders. They may see church leaders as hypocritical or as narrow-minded, and more interested in building an organization than promoting spirituality. This negative view of religion might be summed up by stand-up comedian Cathy Ladman who says, “ All religions are the same: religion is basically guilt, with different holidays.”
As an example of a “spiritual, but not religious” person, Fuller cites a woman who, after going through a divorce, decided to get into a meditation program to regain some self-esteem and help her lose some weight. The Eastern philosophy that was taught in the meditation class was, at first, of little interest to her. She just wanted to get her life back on track. But when interviewed several years later, after she had explored vegetarianism, mandalas, incense, breathing practices, and crystals, she reported that she was just beginning to grow and was still investigating new spiritual insights. Like many other spiritual seekers, she sees her spirituality as a “journey,” the modern equivalent of a religious pilgrimage.
The Rev. Robert Hardies, senior minister of All Souls Unitarian Church in Washington, D.C., spoke of watching people on a bus. One day he noticed what people on the bus were reading – one African-American woman was reading Awake!, the magazine of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. A Latina woman was reading a book in Spanish with a title that translates as “A Metaphysical Guide to Happiness.” And a young white man was reading an anthology called The Best Spiritual Writing of 2002. Three people, alone, very different from one another, all apparently seeking the same thing, whether we call it God, or a Higher Power, or spirituality, or a sense of purpose in life – or perhaps what Joan Borysenko called “a civilization with a heart.”
Whatever it is, many people are on this kind of spiritual journey. Rev. Hardies says that when people discover he is a minister they are likely to say, a little sheepishly, “Well you know, I don’t go to church... but I do consider myself a spiritual person. I guess you could say I’m spiritual but not religious.” By which they mean something like: “I care about God, but I could care less about the church.”
Many of us, right here, even though we are in church, have sympathy for this point-of-view. We’ve all seen the televangelists on TV who seem to have more interest in raising money to keep the show on the air than doing any real good in the world. We’ve seen them blame hurricanes and AIDS on people they believe are sinning. We’ve seen them engage in political action on behalf of discrimination and warfare and other issues we oppose. We know of the cover-up of the sexual abuse of children in the Catholic Church, and the use of polygamy to control women and girls in fundamentalist Mormon sects. We know the official Mormon Church spent millions to defeat marriage equality for lesbians and gays recently in California. Some religious institutions give religion a bad name. And it is likely that all religious institutions will disappoint us at some time or another. And so many of us will agree and say, “Yes, I’m spiritual, but not religious.”

Both “spiritual’ and “religious” ~
But, as we have noticed, it is Sunday morning and here we are in church. Something drew us here today, and it wasn’t our dislike for religious institutions. Something has been drawing independent thinking people here for over two hundred years. Parson William Mason, our very first minister who arrived in 1798, was regarded as a religious rebel, a free-thinker and a heretic in his own time. And if we mean that “spiritual” people are seekers and independent thinkers, and “religious” people are participants in religious communities, then I would argue that those of us who come here are both spiritual and religious. We are both independent and in community.
Rev. Hardies speaks eloquently of his own religious journey, of being forced out of another religious tradition because he is a gay man, and for several years after that going around and telling people that he was “spiritual, but not religious.” When he finally found a welcoming and affirming religious home at the First Unitarian Church of Portland, Oregon, he knew right away that he belonged among the Unitarian Universalists, that he was welcomed and accepted for who he was. And he says that he cried through the entire service, and cried every Sunday at church for about six months.
He is not alone. A few of us were lucky enough to be born into a Unitarian or Universalist community. But many of us, upon finding a Unitarian Universalist congregation for the first time, have had similar experiences of discovering a religious home that affirms our spiritual journey in a way we may have thought wasn’t possible. Here, we have a religious community that accepts the fact that we are individuals, that we do not all think alike, that we have different experiences of the sacred or the holy, and we need not all agree about Jesus, God, and what it means to be religious. Probably most of us are like John Haynes Holmes, who wrote that when he speaks of God “it is poetry and not theology.” We can disagree about the details of theology, and yet we are united around common principles. We are part a very old tradition – the oldest Unitarian churches in Europe date to 1568 – and yet we are not chained to old dogmas and doctrines, but have the freedom to think, explore, and grow. We have found a place where we are accepted for who we are, a place where we belong. This is the church we were looking for, but many of us did not even know existed.

Corridors and rooms ~
According to the Gospel of John, Jesus is reported to have said, “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.” It can also be translated, “there are many rooms.” Hardies also uses the metaphor of a house with many rooms to talk about the religious life. He says that to be spiritual and not religious is like wandering in the corridors of a big house, the House of the Holy. If you just wander in the corridors and hallways, you have the freedom to move about and follow where your conscience leads. But the problem with hallways and corridors is that they can be long and lonely and drafty, and there’s no place to sit down.
Religion happens in the rooms, where there are tables and chairs and fireplaces, and – most importantly – other people. Spirituality tends to be individual, and can be lonely. Religion is practiced in community, in the rooms of the house. It is not in the corridors, but in the rooms where the food is served, where people are fed. There we find a table around which stories are told and songs are sung. Some stories have been told and retold for 2,000 years and more. The rooms are where we are warmed by a community that gets to know us and care about us and looks out for us.
Of course, some rooms can be stuffy and closed, but in our Unitarian Universalist communities – at least those I have experienced in Massachusetts, Michigan, Illinois, Florida and here in Maine – these metaphorical rooms are open and bright, where the windows let the sun in. Yes, some of us can be a little intolerant of those we disagree with, but by and large I have found UUs to be a stimulating and open-minded group of people. A lot of the time we take the room, the religious community, for granted. But there are also many times when the importance of religious community is very clear. I found the UU church in my early twenties, and then wandered away for a while. When I was thirty I returned because I was going through a divorce from my first wife. I was in crisis, and needed the support of a church community. Many people who come to our churches are in some kind of personal crisis. After September 11, 2001, our churches were full. We seek out religious community when we realize our need for “a civilization with a heart” as Joan Borysenko put it.
Another reason people come to church is that spirituality is often too hard to do alone. We need community if we want to discuss our ideas, if we want to learn from others and share our own wisdom. And we need one another if we want to build a better world. The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., realized that the church is a place where together we can change the world. We know that he didn’t do it alone. The Civil Rights Movement was organized in the black churches, and eventually gained many allies in the white churches. Black and white clergy marched together for the freedom and dignity of black Americans. The church is a place where we can organize to do some good for our fellow human beings.
A lot of people today are at home. Americans watch about four hours of TV a day on average. We are using our computers more and more. It’s easy to sit in front of a screen and withdraw from public life. It takes just a little bit of effort to get out of our chair, out of that comfortable place at home, and become part of a community. But it is worth the effort.
Being a spiritual seeker as an individual is fine, as far as it goes. But I’m not satisfied being spiritual all by myself. Gathering together in religious community is essential to my spirituality.
Here we are committed to a community of like-minded persons, spiritual seekers, where we have a collective allegiance to one another and to the principles of liberal religion: the freedom of religious expression, the value of religious exploration, the tolerance of religious differences, respect for the interdependent web of all existence, belief in the inherent worth and dignity of every person, the authority of reason and conscience, the value of living ethical lives, the motive force of love, the necessity of the democratic process, and the value of religious community. That is the core of our faith. That is what brings us into community with one another. That’s what makes us both spiritual and religious.
Amen.