Are You Religious But Not Spiritual?

Or maybe spiritual but not religious?

A couple of weeks ago, I heard someone say, “I’m religious, but not spiritual.”

That was a new one for me.

I’ve known plenty of people who say they’re spiritual but not religious. These include:

1. Individuals who want to emphasize that their faith is built on their personal relationship with God, not on their practice of ritual or church membership.

2. People who don’t have a connection with institutional religion, but are spiritual seekers.

3. Those who have been burned or burned out by the church who continue to grow spiritually now that they’re no longer constrained by the boundaries of their former (often toxic) faith community.

I have always seen myself as a member of the “spiritual but not religious” crew as I have a stake in each of the three groups. My born-again faith (1) is linked to my ongoing spiritual hunger (2) – a hunger, miraculously, that has been not been quenched entirely by my depressing history of church horror stories (3). When I hear someone tell me they’re spiritual but not religious, I understand that in some way, they want others to know they care about the God of the universe and the universe of the soul.

The context for the comment from the person who told me they were religious but not spiritual was related to his vocation as a religious leader. This individual had dedicated his career to teaching other aspiring leaders the rituals associated with his denomination’s liturgy. He said that passing on his religious tradition was what animated him both vocationally and personally, and suggested in our conversation that belief in God was secondary at best to the importance of ritual.

While I’ve never known anyone who said it quite as frankly as this man did, when I started reflecting on his words, I realized I’ve known quite a few religious but not spiritual people in the Evangelical world I’ve inhabited for most of the last five decades. Because I’d heard probably hundreds of times in the early years of my faith journey that Christianity isn’t a religion, but a relationship with God, I believed that any historic faith tradition that leaned heavily on liturgical ritual was just a husk meant to fool gullible people into believing their practices would get them into heaven.

It took me much, much longer to recognize that even the casual “come as you are” low church folks with whom I was worshipping had plenty of ritual of their own. For example, a standard nondenominational Sunday morning liturgy included singing 3 pop worship songs (on repeat in Charismatic churches), listening to a 45-minute sermon, and then coming forward in response to the sermon for prayer to the “altar” even when that altar was the stage of a rented high school theater.

There is a religious arc that begins with the genuine personal conviction of someone who functions as an influencer in a group. That conviction becomes a habit among his or her first wave of followers. If that conviction gets baked into the subculture, it can harden over time into a lifeless religious ritual that can mark the identity of that group’s adherents. Let’s face it. Ritual in any form can be notoriously easy for adherents to perform on autopilot.

I’m not anti-ritual. I wrote a book about living into the the rhythms of the Hebrew calendar and/or the Christian liturgical year, for Pete’s sake. Despite my “We don’t have any liturgy except that we actually do” Evangelical beginnings, I have come to love religious liturgy in many forms in when I sense the ones facilitating it are connected in relationship with the living God. Even when I am in spaces where it seems that leaders are religious and not at all animated by the life of the spirit, I try to find a point of connection with the ritualized words of sung worship, prayer, and Bible text. And when I can’t find a way to connect, I am experienced enough in the ways of religion to shift into autopilot, too.

When religion is drained of spiritual connection, it becomes performance, whether your congregation meets in a historic cathedral or the back corner of a coffee shop. The word “religion” (threskeia in Greek, which connotes ritual, but it is ritual anchored in relational worship of God) is used four times in the New Testament: when Paul described his “before Christ” affiliation; when he warns against false teachers who lead others into false worship; and when James highlights the core differences between false and true worship of God:

Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. (James 1:26-27)

In the chaotic times in which we’re living right now, religious ritual may provide an anchor and comfort, but it alone won’t fuel the kind of threskeia to which James calls us: a living faith rooted in the person of the resurrected Messiah. He alone can empower us to use our words with discipline and faithfulness, care for the marginalized, and live a brave and holy life. The word threskeia suggests that true religion is in its essence spiritual. Choosing a side – Team Spiritual or Team Religion - is a game that has warped our understanding of what God wants from each of us, which is worship in spirit and in (religious) truth, which is way more challenging than leaning into one or the other, and infinitely more beautiful.

What do you think? What gets lost when these two concepts are separated and pitted against each other in our ways of thinking and living?

SNEAK A PEEK AND GET A BONUS!

I wrote Downsizing: Letting Go of Evangelicalism’s Nonessentials to be a provocative conversation-starter about the occasionally good and too frequently awful movements within Evangelicalism during the last half-century. This is a conversation that includes those who are still in the Evangelical world, those who’ve shaken the dust from their feet as they’ve exited it, and everyone else who is trying to make sense of how we got to this crossroads moment in the church. This conversation needs you!

What’s provocative about it? Though the book releases August 19th, you can find out now if you preorder (use the button below or place an order with your favorite bookseller).

Take a screenshot or picture of your receipt, and sign up for my launch team.

By “launch team”, I mean “You get access to a NetGalley digital version of the book now, and an invite to a special gathering to have a meaningful conversation about the book when it releases.” I don’t mean, “Here’s a bunch of extra work for you to do!”

Of course, you’ll get the official copy you pre-ordered in August when it releases. But it’s kind of a cool perk to have an opportunity to pre-read it now, and be ready to review it and share it with friends so you can continue the conversation in your circles.

May you live in relationship with God that makes religion beautiful to those in your world. Praying for us all, friends.

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Photo by Worshae on Unsplash