Religion and spirituality are often used synonymously, the assumption being that religious people possess spirituality, while spiritual people practice religion. However, a simple glance into the etymology of the two words is enough to conclude that they are speaking of very different dynamics, and should not be casually paired.
Religion, from the Latin religio, suggests a bond between humanity and the gods, and offers institutional teachings on how to best promote this bond. Spirituality, from the root spiritus – soul, courage, vigor or breath – speaks to an individual, experiential and existential search for, and expression of, personal meaning and transcendence without a mandatory institutional component (although institutional involvement is certainly an option).
Not only is it possible to be spiritual but not religious, spiritually non-religious people are a rapidly growing portion of the nation’s religious landscape. They have discovered, whether tacitly or consciously, that adhering to religious doctrines often causes more psychological distress than benefit, where as spirituality is kinder and gentler to their minds and spirits.
Multidisciplinary research data now suggests that a growing number of people consider themselves “spiritual but not religious.” The 2007 Pew Forum Religious Landscape Survey finds that 16% of the U.S. population considers themselves to be “not affiliated with any particular religion”, making them the nation’s fourth largest “religious group” (with numbers similar to those of the mainstream Protestant churches).
Worth noting is that 5.8% of them say that – despite their lack of affiliation with any particular religious group – religion is important in their lives. The report calls these 1.8 million people the “religious unaffiliated.” Close to 100,000 of those polled actually used the phrase “spiritual but not religious,” and the acronym SBNR is now in use worldwide.
But what do people mean when they proclaim themselves spiritual? Dr. Bernard Spilka, Professor Emeritus at University of Denver, attempted to operationalize what he calls the “fuzzy concept” of spirituality by conducting a comprehensive review of literature on the topic. He found that spirituality has three broad categories: 1) A God-oriented spirituality; 2) a world-oriented spirituality stressing one’s relationships with ecology or nature; and 3) a humanistic spirituality, stressing human achievement or potential.
God-oriented spirituality allows for connection with a higher power of choice. Nature-oriented spirituality (sometimes known as Pantheism) allows for connection with and protection of the natural world. Humanistic-spirituality allows for connection with the existential givens of existence – freedom, choice, death and loneliness – and the resulting hierarchy of needs for safety, shelter, love, belonging, esteem and self actualization. These aspects of spirituality offer some of the same comforts as organized religion, and emotional comfort is one of the main reasons people seek religion to begin with.
Why has this category of religious nomad grown more rapidly than any other in recent decades? SBNR seekers are hungering for a personal connection with a higher power of their choice, while at the same time feeling hesitant about locking themselves into any one paradigm. The Pew Survey respondents admitted to perceiving religious people as judgmental and hypocritical. They thought religious institutions were too focused on rules, and religious leaders were too fixated on money and power. And they are often correct in their assessment. Religion has historically been synonymous with the institutional promotion and protection of specific doctrines. These doctrines define how members should act morally, and how their relationship with the divine should be tailored and tended to. Hierarchical in structure, the few hold power over the many, creating a system of leadership that places the masses at the bottom of the pyramid while suggesting that those at the top are somehow more competent or more connected to the divine.
The religiously unaffiliated don’t buy the belief that any one single religion holds the complete truth. Perhaps, like the Dalai Lama, they have come to believe that “it is more important to create a safer, kinder world than to recruit more people to the religion that happens to satisfy us.” Consciously or unconsciously, they may have found that adhering to a personally defined spiritual belief system feels better than participating in a specific religious tradition. The relationship with divinity is an intimate and individual one, far too vast for the dogma of any one tradition to comfortably hold as there are simply too many contradictions – between personal truth and institutional dogma, between religions claiming to possess the one true path to salvation and within religious texts.
Religion lends itself well to contradictions, and these contradictions can be bad for mental health. Attempting to reconcile an internal, unique and authentic definition of the divine along side of an external, conformist and institutional definition of that same higher power can quickly result in cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is a phrase coined by social psychologist Leon Festinger, to describe the unpleasant state of anxiety that occurs when two conflicting beliefs are held at the same time People process countless thoughts, feelings and behaviors each day, and like them to be in sync, or congruent with one another. When thoughts, feelings and actions in the world are congruent, a sense of integrity results. When there is an inconsistency among the three, a state of psychological unease occurs.
Using the example of a Catholic woman who greatly values her church community but is choosing to use birth control despite the church’s prohibition against it, four conditions must align to create the uncomfortable cognitive dissonance within her. 1) She must acknowledge that she has a choice (she can obey or ignore the prohibition). 2) She must execute the action (of taking the birth control pills) even though it contradicts her beliefs about being a “good Catholic”. 3) She must be aware of the negative consequences of her behavior (she must know that taking the birth control pill is considered a sin); and 4) she must be unable to rationalize her actions (i.e. she is not taking the pill to help with migraines or unpredictable periods, she is taking it in order to not get pregnant).
Participating in unrealistically simplified and dualistic beliefs requires and also causes what cognitive psychologists call “distorted thoughts.” Distorted thoughts result from inaccurate interpretations of events. There are a common dozen or so, with descriptive names like “over-generalizing,” “personalizing,” and “shoulds.” If an employee gets a memo to report to the boss’s office, a common first thought is “what am I in trouble for?” This is a misinterpretation of the event, a distortion known as “mind-reading”, and it causes the employee anxiety. This self-sustaining loop of inaccurate thoughts causing feelings which influence thoughts can occur countless times a day, is largely habitual (often learned from caregivers who used the same distortions to explain reality), and comes with a long history.
The Greeks and ancient Israel laid dichotomous theoretical foundations in which body and spirit were separate, and that belief remains common to this day. Matter and spirit are separated, as are earth and heaven, personality and soul, clergy and parishioners, id and ego, University of Name-Your-State and Name-your-State State University… the list goes on and on. This separation was a common topic of early philosophical speculation. Consider Plato, who conceived of a soul, immaterial and immortal, which had its permanent home in the world of perfect Ideals or Forms. Platonism considered the world to be an imperfect reflection of these ideals, and blamed the body and its lusts for hindering reunion with perfection. The Biblical story of the Fall describes humankind’s expulsion from Eden as a result of Eve’s desire for knowledge. It demonstrates both the separation of heaven from earth (God in Eden, humanity cast out into the secular world) and the separation of the Divine Feminine from her rightful place at the side of God (Eve as an equal partner to Adam, or Goddess as feminine counterpart to God). These unrealistically simplified polarities continued through history, and today the words “right” and “left” are applied to no end of warring ideas and factions.
This insistence that the truth comes in only two sizes sets the perfect stage for dissonance, as institutionalized religious beliefs necessitate that events be interpreted in a distorted fashion. “Either/or thinking” is present in the belief that one is either inside the flock or outside of it, either doing it right or doing it wrong, either saintly or sinful, either leader or follower. “Filtering” is at play when a religion is able to filter the validity and humanity out of other religions in the assumption that theirs is the “right” one. Placing heaven at the end of life is a form of “time-traveling.” Placing hell at the end of life is a form of “catastrophizing” or “what if” thinking. Double-binds can occur when neither option available is a good one; a gay fundamentalist Christian for example can either be a gay “bad” Christian or a good Christian who denies sexuality. Either way, it is a lose/lose situation. Consider this quote from a study of 4,000 Catholic and Protestant women who wrestle to keep what is good in their religion and allow for truths that they feel but cannot find:
I find my current ideas about God at best paradoxical, at worst contradictory and full of tension. Brought up in a firmly patriarchal tradition, my habits of prayers, meditation, and study are all shadowed by patriarchal imagery, deeply ingrained. But my experiences as a female person…are continually transforming not only my sense of who or what I am, but my sense of the nature and identity of God. I often experience a profound longing for an immanent, nurturing ‘maternal’ force in my life, but have difficulty catching more than a glimpse of a parental, rather than a paternal God.
Research has shown time and time again that the more distorted thoughts one is thinking, the more likely one is to be depressed or anxious. The brain does not know the difference between a real or imagined event. If a student is catastrophizing about failing a test, the brain will respond to that fear with increased levels of cortisol and adrenalin. The body will then respond to the chemical intervention by speeding up the heart and respiration, which the brain will then interpret as further proof of danger, sending more chemicals to help. A distorted thought tips the first domino, and a powerful combination of chemicals and emotions assure that the rest will fall.
Just as four conditions must be met for cognitive dissonance to occur, social psychologists have found four ways to alleviate discomfort from the dissonance. The good Catholic woman taking birth control pills can : 1) change the offending behavior so that it corresponds to her belief (stop taking the pill); 2) add a new thought to lessen the anxiety caused by the offending action (plan to confess the sin and pay penance each week, and continue taking the pill); 3) attempt to ignore the dissonance; or 4) change the thought or attitude to make the behavior seem acceptable (decide that it is not necessary to follow the letter of the Catholic law – only the spirit – continue to taking the pill and practicing her faith). Changing the interpretation of an event resolves most cognitive distortions as well.
Spiritual but not religious people, by applying these strategies, are able to find a comfortable place to rest their existentially weary souls and bodies, as it allows them to keep the beliefs and practices that they find meaningful, while discarding the parts that feel incongruent.
Granted, there are liberal versions of religion which do not tend to cause cognitive dissonance because they avoid exclusionary absolutes, such as The 7 principles of the Unitarian Universalists :
• The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
• Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
• Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
• A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
• The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
• The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
• Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.
and the Unity Church, which seeks to be “free of discrimination on the basis of race, color, gender, age, creed, religion, national origin, ethnicity, physical disability or sexual orientation.” The Unity Church even uses the phrase “spiritual but not religious” on it’s literature, in an attempt to establish itself as the church for those who don’t like church.
These inclusive and non-judgmental faiths result in less cognitive dissonance among members than the more rule-bound religions do, offering members the same community, rites of passage, comfort and communion found in traditional religion. And religious people are not without their own cognitive strategies for creating existential self-comfort. Dr. Kenneth Pargament, who researches the relationship between religion and well-being, has identified three ways in which people access God during times of hardship; some leave it to God to take care of the problem, others collaborate with God to solve the dilemma, and the last group does not seek God’s assistance at all, preferring to take care of the issue themselves.
The spiritually unaffiliated also pair well-being and spirituality, in an individualized combination of faith, free will and personal accountability. They are hybrids in their synthesis of east and west, thought and feeling, of self and others. Research shows that these spiritual free agents are “more likely to engage in group experiences related to spiritual growth, more likely to hold non-traditional “new age” beliefs [and] more likely to have had mystical experiences. ” Another polarity they seek to reunite is that of religion and pop-culture, through the creation of what Belgium sociologist Adam Possami calls “hyper-religions”, in which facets of religious traditions are combined with elements of pop culture. Jediism (Star Wars), Matrixism (The Matrix) and Da Vinci code-breaking Christians are all examples of hyper-religions, which are meant to be “consumed and individualized” in ways not possible for traditional religion. Spiritual people create kaleidoscopic belief systems with colorful pieces from all areas of their lives.
Yet caution must be taken not to set up a false division between religion and spirituality; the overlap between the two is substantial and the church does not own the right to pray any more than spirituality owns the search for the sacred. People do not chose the religion they are born into, and there is no great courage required to stay there. Whether one chooses religion or spirituality is not important. What is important is that one chooses. To be spiritual but not religious is not easy. It requires enormous courage to leave the safety of a well-tended flock and to walk through the world balancing certainty that one’s truth is true, with open receptivity to change and a fair amount of judgment from the major religious groups. Unlike the cognitive dissonance caused by staying in a religion that is too small for one’s spirit, the existential angst of personalizing a spiritual belief system will not result in physical and mental illness, but rather in recognition of the Divine Light within, regardless of what it is called. The 13th century mystic and poet Rumi captures this all-consuming quest in lovely simplicity:
All day I think about it, then at night I say it. Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing? I have no idea. My soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that, and I intend to end up there.
A Google search of the phrase “spiritual but not religious” takes three-tenths of a second to retrieve 5 million results. Irrespective of the particulars of the results, this suggests that an enormous search is taking place both concretely and metaphorically. Spiritual but not religious seekers may not know exactly where they’re going, but like Rumi, they fully intend to end up there.
Endnotes
Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life (2007) U.S. Religious Landscape Survey.
Spilka, B. (1993, August). Spirituality: Problems and directions in operationalizing a fuzzy concept. Paper presented at the meeting of the American Psychological Association. Toronto, Ontario.
Festinger, L., Riecken, H., & Schachter, S. (1956). When Prophecy Fails: A social and ssychological study of a modern group that predicted the destruction of the world. New York: Harper Torchbooks.
Beck, A. T. (1976). Cognitive therapies and emotional disorders. New York: New American Library
Winter, M. T. (1995). Defecting in place: Women claiming responsibility for their own spiritual lives. New York: Crossroad.
Seligman, M. (2006). Learned optimism: How to change your mind and your life. New York City: Random House. ISBN 978-1400078394.
“Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.” Our Unitarian Universalist Principles. Accessed July 19, 2011. http://www.uua.org/beliefs/6798.shtml
“Unity: A positive path for spiritual living”. Honoring diversity within the Unity movement. Accessed July 19, 2011. http://unity.org/association/aboutUs/whatWeBelieve/honoringDiversity.html
Pargament, K. I., Kennel, J., Hathaway, W., Grevengoed, N., Newman, J., & Jones, W. (1988). “Religion and the problem-solving process: Three styles of coping.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, v27 n1, pp90-104. ISSN 0021-8294
Zinnbauer, B.J. (1997). Capturing the meanings of religiousness and spirituality: One way down from a definitional Tower of Babel. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Bowling Green State University
Possamai, A. (2007). Yoda goes to the Vatican: Youth spirituality and popular culture. The Charles Strong Lecture Series. 1-17.
Pargament, Kenneth I. “The Psychology of Religion and Spirituality? Yes and NO.” International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 9, no. 1 (January 1999).
Rumi, J., & Barks, C. (2004). The essential Rumi. New York: Harper Collins. Pg 2.